We Built Our Own House
by Starcrier
Summary: There is a universe, somewhere, where they fail. This is not that universe. AU from The Carnivorous Carnival on.
1. The Effective Escape

Chapter I

The Effective Escape

There is a universe, somewhere, where they fail.

There is a universe, perhaps very near to this one, where Jacques Snicket doesn't step out of the way of a falling rulebook, where his throat is cut on the floor of a dusty barroom that had once been a firehouse. A universe where Olivia Caliban is eaten by lions, where the Baudelaires make the treacherous journey up to the VFD headquarters alone and once again find only ash and ruin instead of answers. A universe where their sorrow is a never-ending circle, around and around.

But this?

This is not that universe.

* * *

 _So,_ Olivia Caliban thinks in the brief seconds she has left to think anything at all, _this is how it ends. In the belly of the beast._

Below her, the lions, poor starved creatures, are roaring and snarling for food, _any_ food - it's hard to dislike them even as they're about to devour her. She'd do the same in their position, probably.

At least the Baudelaires have escaped the same fate. If she'd accomplished nothing else, she'd been able to do that much for them. _I'm sorry, Jacques,_ she thinks, _I did the best I could._

She can't help it - she screams when Olaf cuts the rope holding the platform over the pit, screams when gravity does its job and pulls her down.

In that moment, three things happen at once: Olaf lets out a high, cackling laugh, the crowd cheers, and something solid and sturdy collides with her, tackling her into the dirt safely on the other side of the pit.

It takes her a dazed moment to recover her wits, to swallow her aborted scream, to open her eyes and see what it was that had knocked her aside. She finds herself staring directly in the face of -

"Jacques Snicket?" she says, high, breathless. He's overtop of her, tangled in her ridiculous skirts, hands braced on either side of her head, chest heaving with exertion. It's a stunningly good look for him, especially considering it means he isn't dead.

Stars, he isn't dead - he's not… he's here, he saved her - _he's not dead_. And neither, for that matter, is _she_.

"Olivia Caliban," he says in greeting, flashing that soft smile of his. It hits her like a kick to the chest and drives out what little breath has returned to her lungs in much the same way.

There are hundreds of things she wants to say, ranging from the obvious - _you're alive, you're here, you saved me_ \- to logistical - _how are you alive, how are you here, what will we do now_ \- to euphoric - _you're wonderful, how could I have doubted you, you're the bravest, noblest man I've ever met_ \- to something deep and strong and private - _I love, I love, I love_ \- but she knows there isn't time for any of it. Something in her digs deep, shoves it all aside to simply smile back, despite how nearly impossible it is to resist the urge to take his face in her hands and kiss him until all their problems go away.

"You're late," is all she trusts herself to say, and springs to her feet the second he rolls off of her.

Around them, the crowd is jeering. The circus and acting troupes alike are circling, edging closer, seeming to consider whether or not to pounce, to attempt to shove them both into the pit at their backs. It is only a withering look from Jacques that keeps them back, a look that turns his features to stone and makes him look very much like the storybook hero that had leapt into her mind the first time she ever laid eyes on him.

It makes him look like he could take them all and come away without a scratch, and perhaps they sense this, because none of them dare move within his reach. She spares a private moment to wonder about all the things she doesn't know about this man, to wonder just how formidable he really is.

Olaf, for his part, seems momentarily too stunned even to speak. Olivia thinks _that_ particular turn of events is long overdue.

Unfortunately, it doesn't last. "Impossible," he hisses once he's recovered himself, "I killed you! This is a trick!"

"There's no trick, Count," says Jacques, "I'm really here, your plot has failed, and you'll soon be spending a very long time in jail. With a _legitimate_ jailer," he continues with a scornful look at Esme. The disgraced financial advisor sneers at him in reply, baring perfect teeth. Olivia has never been a violent person, but the idea of knocking those gleaming pearly whites down her throat is, very briefly, an enticing one.

Olaf has many (many _, many_ ) personal failings, among them a severe lack of personal hygiene and a sadistic streak a mile wide, but one thing he isn't is _slow_. "We'll see, Snicket," he all but spits, and raises that horrible knife again.

Jacques wants to be noble, to finish the war with Olaf here and now; Olivia knows that like she knows her own heartbeat, like she knows how he takes his tea, like she knows that whether she dies in ten seconds or fifty years, she will never love anyone as much as she loves him.

She also knows, with the same utter certainty, that they are seriously outnumbered, and that there are three terrified orphans just outside this tent who cannot be left alone even a single second longer, and that if they fight this battle here and now, they won't win.

So she does the only thing she can think to do. She grabs his hand and tugs once, just gently, just enough to get him to look at her. He does, and when their eyes meet that's all it takes to convey her thoughts on the situation.

Something about him seems to sag, just a little, perhaps with the knowledge that he'll bear this burden longer yet, that all the years of pain and grief won't end here, as he'd no doubt hoped. She reads the look in his eyes as easily as she reads tea leaves. _I can't go on. I'll go on._

We'll _go on._ She squeezes his hand, warm and strong in hers, and wills him to understand, just once more.

He reads her loud and clear - of course he does - and in the next second flashes her another one of his trademark soft smiles that makes her feel like the butterflies in her stomach have taken up the watusi. And then he turns on his heel, still holding her hand, and races for the exit.

There's a cry of outrage from behind them - Olaf or Esme, she can't be sure - followed by a strange whirring sound. Jacques yanks her out of the way just in time for Olaf's knife to come flying past her face. Time seems to slow, for just the briefest instant, and bizarrely she catches a glimpse of her own wide-eyed reflection in the serrated metal - it's so close and so sharp it takes a lock of her hair with it when it buries itself in the bleachers at her right, much to the consternation of the still-jeering crowd.

"Too close!" she gasps, unable to say anything else as Jacques all but drags her through the tent flaps and into the blistering desert air. It's a fight not to stumble over her skirts - honestly, the lack of maneuverability in this getup is astounding given that it was designed by a group of secret agents. She finds she much prefers the leather trousers she'd worn to scale the apartment building while they'd been searching for the Quagmires, and not just for the way they had made Jacques fight not to stare at her, either.

"Baudelaires!" she calls, wrestling her mind back to the present and off the very handsome and very-much-not-dead man still keeping a vice grip on her hand, " _Baudelaires!_ "

"Olivia!" She spots Klaus first, or rather his head, poking out from the entrance of her private tent - oh good, they'd had the presence of mind to run for the provisions she'd packed before they ran for the getaway carts. Clever children. She really quite adores them.

Violet and Sunny's heads emerge next to their brother's, and all three children don identical looks of shock when they set eyes on Jacques.

"How-?" Violet tries, but Jacques waves her off, winking despite his urgency as he breezes past her.

"I'll explain everything later. We have to hurry." He lets go of Olivia's hand so he can better lift the box of food she'd prepared, and she misses his warmth instantly. Klaus has already got the box of books, save for the earmarked copy of _The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations_ , which Olivia quickly takes up herself. Violet hoists Sunny higher on her hip, and as one they all look to Jacques, who nods at them.

"Let's go."

When they step back out onto the grounds, the carnival is already burning.

Smoke fills the air as tent after tent catches fire, and people are trampling over one another in their haste to get clear of the danger. Olivia reaches with her free hand to latch on to Violet, who latches onto Klaus, whose hands are full, so Jacques grabs his shoulder. Together, they form an unbreakable line against the tide of people, who, after calling for entertainment in the form of bloodshed mere minutes before, are now scrambling for their own lives. There's an irony there, but she's too distracted to put it into words.

"Oh no," Violet groans in a voice that is entirely too full of despair for someone her age, nodding towards the roller coaster at the far end of the park. The carts she had spent all night fixing for the journey up the mountain are now consumed in flame. "Our ride out!"

"Never fear," says Jacques, already moving to the opposite end of the grounds, "We'll take the taxi."

Sure enough, his trusty yellow cab is just there, parked behind a rather disturbing sign depicting a clown that weeps even as it smiles.

"How did-?" Olivia tries, only to cut herself off halfway through as the answer comes to her. The previous Madame Lulu had taken his taxi to go after the sugar bowl - clearly Jacques had intercepted her. Lucky thing too, otherwise they'd all be quite stranded.

The children pile into the back as Jacques stuffs the supplies in the trunk to the best of his ability around the books, and then all but dives behind the wheel. It's not a moment too soon - she can see Olaf's own disgusting vehicle through her spyglass, peeling away from the burning carnival grounds and aimed dead for the Mortmain Mountains.

"He's got a head start," warns Olivia as she slides into the passenger seat, already knowing where he's planning to go.

"I know a shortcut," Jacques replies as he throws the car into gear and takes off. She hopes this shortcut shaves off enough time to allow for his careful driving habits, but then it's unlikely he'd have mentioned it if it wouldn't.

"Jacques, how did you survive? We saw your body!" says Klaus, still wide-eyed from the events of the day. Olivia turns to look at the man seated next to her, her own eyebrow raised in question. Relief is still pounding through her veins, strong enough to make her eyes water. And to think, just an hour ago she'd believed she'd never see him again.

"We Snickets have always been good at faking our own deaths," says Jacques casually, "My brother in particular was exceptional at it. But I had no idea Olaf planned to frame you children for my murder, otherwise I would have found an alternative. I was hoping the news would reach my colleagues in time to stage a _deus ex machina_ and get you out of there."

"They did," says Violet, "It just didn't work."

"So I heard. I'm sorry Baudelaires, it seems we've failed you at every turn." He's quiet for a moment, then glances at them through the rearview mirror. "I understand you were able to rescue the Quagmires."

"Reebo!" says Sunny.

"What my sister means to say is that we did. Olaf was hiding them in the Fowl Fountain, but we broke them out and Hector took them up in his hot-air mobile home. Olaf can't reach them now," says Klaus.

Olivia and Jacques trade glances. Hector had been a disappointment on multiple levels, not the least of which had been because he had fainted instead of defending an infant against a murder charge, but at least he'd been able to do _something_.

Considering the circumstances, she tries not to blame him too much, but it's difficult. No wonder he hasn't been an active volunteer for over a decade.

"You were very clever. Your parents would be proud," says Jacques. The silence that falls over the car in response is so heavy it nearly chokes her.

"Jacques," Violet says after a long moment, so quietly her voice almost doesn't carry to the front seat. When she doesn't say anything else, Jacques turns to glance at her over his shoulder.

"Yes, Violet?"

She doesn't respond for so long Olivia almost thinks she isn't going to, but it hardly matters because she already knows what the girl wants to ask. Olivia is curious about the answer herself.

Finally, Violet swallows, grabs Klaus' hand, pulls Sunny closer, and asks, "Did one of our parents survive the fire?"

Jacques doesn't startle, exactly, but his brow furrows abruptly, seemingly in confusion. "Why would you think… _Ah._ " His expression clears only to fall again half a second later.

"You were at Heimlich Hospital. I take it you saw the file my siblings and I had been working on in the Library of Records." It's not a question.

"You said there was evidence someone else had survived the fire," says Klaus.

Jacques sighs once, heavily. When he looks to her, she _knows_. There's been a misunderstanding, a costly one, and her heart breaks for the children all over again.

"I'm so sorry, Baudelaires," he says. One of them, she's not sure whom, gives a sharp, pained gasp like an aborted sob, hopes dashed before he even finishes speaking. She wishes she could stop the car and hold them.

Hope, Olivia knows, is like fire, beautiful and bright and often necessary for life - and when deferred it can burn twice as fiercely.

 _Poor dears,_ she thinks, preemptively rummaging in the glove compartment for tissues.

"There have been so many fires recently that it can be difficult to keep track of them all, and of who survived and who didn't," Jacques continues, staring dead ahead with an intensity that makes her wonder if he's really seeing the road, "but the fire I spoke about in that file wasn't the fire that destroyed your home."

There is another moment of silence, more thick and oppressive than the desert air outside.

"Gah," Sunny says softly, and it's a long while before one of her siblings can translate.

"She wants to know who it was," says Klaus finally, "the survivor you were talking about."

Olivia finally locates the tissues and hands them back, but none of the children are crying. This, more than anything, breaks her heart - how much loss have they endured, how many times have their hopes been dashed for them to accept this news with stoic resignation rather than grief?

 _I should have thrown that crystal ball at Olaf's head,_ thinks Olivia, and perhaps Jacques senses something of her thoughts, because he leans over and takes one of her hands in his. She grips him back as tightly as she can.

"The fire I was discussing was the fire that orphaned the Quagmires," says Jacques, "and the survivor was their brother, Quigley."

* * *

The children are quiet after that, a heavy, solid sort of quiet that comes with physical and mental exhaustion. Olivia privately wonders how long it's been since any of them have gotten a full night's sleep, and her suspicions that it's been entirely too long are confirmed when they all drop off one by one as Jacques makes his steady way up the mountain.

He's still holding her hand, stroking a thumb across the back of it absently, and staring out the windshield. Every so often he'll glance in the rearview mirror at the children, as though checking to make sure they're still there, before shaking his head and fixing his attention back on the road. Aside from one brief, heavily-encoded phone call to Jacquelyn at the start of their trip, he has barely spoken a word.

"Where is Quigley now?" she asks about two hours into the drive. She's careful to keep her voice low so as not to disturb the children.

Jacques sighs, shakes his head. "We don't know. It looks like he escaped the fire using one of the tunnels that connected his parent's mansion to Dr. Montgomery's, but by the time we tracked him there he was already gone. My sister is looking for him now, but so far she doesn't have any leads."

"Maybe he'll go back to Dr. Montgomery's?" Olivia says, "Could someone set a watch?"

"There's nothing to watch," he replies, "his home burned too."

 _Of course it did,_ Olivia thinks, but doesn't dare say. Things are bleak enough without her being unnecessarily negative.

"You should rest," he says, looking over at her with such an openly affectionate expression she feels heat rise to her face in response, "we've got a ways to go yet."

That… doesn't sound like a bad idea, actually. It's been almost a full week since she's had anything more than a few hours of sleep a night, and none at all in the last two days. Nodding, she closes _The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations_ , which has been lying open and unread on her lap since they reached the foot of the mountains, and pulls her feet up. Or she attempts to, anyway, as doing so involves yet another exasperating fight with her skirts - she resolves to burn the thing the first chance she gets.

 _Well,_ she amends, considering, _maybe not_ burn _it._ _Throw it off a cliff, maybe._

Jacques' mouth quirks in amusement at the length of time it takes to get herself situated. She narrows her eyes at him in response and scoots closer to lay her head on his shoulder, curling into his side. He goes stiff for only the briefest second, more from surprise than discomfort. Despite his dashing good looks and the iron strength of his character, she gets the distinct sense that it's been a very long time since anyone has laid a hand on him in gentleness. The knowledge makes her tuck herself as close as she possibly can to him out of pure spite, as though she can make up for this neglect through sheer force of will alone.

He's as sturdy and safe as he ever was, and smells like tea and dust and leather. When he shifts a few moments later, it's only so he can throw his arm around her and rest his own head against hers. It's practically impossible not to fall asleep in such a warm, secure position.

"Wake me when you get tired," she says, allowing her eyes to flutter shut, "and I'll drive for a while."

"Of course," he says, which means he almost definitely plans to let her sleep until they reach the gates of the VFD headquarters.

"And don't think I don't want to talk to you about what happened in the Village," she continues, feeling a wave of exhaustion tug at her senses, attempting to draw her down into oblivion, "I still want to know exactly how you survived, and exactly how you plan on avoiding that scenario in the future so I don't spend weeks thinking you're dead."

"Of course," he says again, much softer, and she might be imagining the sudden, brief pressure against her crown - the telltale brush of a kiss.

She smiles as she lets the dark overtake her, secure in the knowledge that this time, he'll be there when she wakes.

* * *

Jacques tells her the VFD headquarters would once have been bustling no matter what time of day or night it was, stuffed to the brim with volunteers from all across the world dedicated to assembling whatever knowledge they could get their hands on and putting out fires, both figurative and literal.

Now, it stands mostly empty, maintained only by a few caretakers stationed here for general upkeep and information relay. Both the schism and the arson outbreaks have worked to cull their numbers significantly, and they haven't been able to obtain new volunteers quickly enough to make up the gap.

It is for this reason that once Jacques pulls into the garage of the headquarters and guides them past no fewer than ten levels of security involving biolocks and passcodes relating to obscure literary references, there is no one to greet them, and the halls are nearly as dark and cold as the mountain outside.

"We'll stay here until we get word it's safe," Jacques explains, but he doesn't say who will be sending word, or where they'll go once they get it. Olivia sighs and adds the questions to her ever-growing mental list of things to ask him once the children are safely abed.

It's been full dark for a while now; the clock on the taxi's dash reads just after two in the morning. Despite sleeping for the better part of the day, the children are still moving like zombies in the snow.

She doesn't blame them, the poor things - their last few months have consisted of nothing but a constant flight from enemies and the emotional rollercoaster of being traded back and forth between abusive, neglectful guardians and genuinely kind ones who either died or were too frightened to fight for them.

 _It's different this time_ , Olivia thinks resolutely as she takes in their faces, still smudged with dirt from their circus troupe disguises, _it's_ going _to be different this time._

As usual, Jacques has prepared everything well in advance - one of the volunteers stationed here has gotten a suite ready for them, so they make their way down the darkened, eerie hallways to seek further respite. The children walk in an dazed shuffle-huddle, blinking at the grand, though dim and somewhat dusty, state of their surroundings. Olivia is doing the same, at least a little, but she's also hyperfocused on the Baudelaires, which is why she's the first to react when Violet stumbles. Olivia catches her just in time to keep her from crashing to the ground and likely landing on the still-sleeping Sunny in the process. The infant gives a brief, startled cry, sharply awakened by the sudden movement, and clings tighter to her sister.

"Careful," she says, brushing the older girl's hair out of her sleep-heavy eyes. The emotional toll of finding out their parents really weren't ever coming back must have been greater than even she'd anticipated, and there's something to be said for the kind of release that comes with being able to grieve around people you know won't exploit it. It's usually as cathartic as it is wearying, and these children have _months_ of pain left to work through.

"Do you want me to carry Sunny for you?" she offers, overcome with a sudden desperation to do something, anything, to help relieve even a little bit of the burden these children have carried for far too long.

She's not prepared for the way Violet just… freezes, eyes wide, and looks to her brother as though for help. Klaus goes oddly still at the same moment, and some kind of war plays out between them. Violet's hand tightens ever so slightly in the back of Sunny's sweater, and Olivia thinks, _Oh_.

They are polite to the point of personal injury, these children - never rude even in the face of mortal danger. Olivia knows they have no wish to refuse her, but equally strong is their desire to _not_ hand Sunny over. She doesn't know precisely why, but given their situation, she can guess.

 _Dear things_ , she thinks with a pang of affection so sharp it nearly brings tears to her eyes.

"It's okay," she says, and it is, "let's just get you kids in a real bed, okay?"

She pretends not to notice the way Violet's shoulders sag in relief, and settles for walking just a bit closer, ready to catch them should either stumble again.

Olivia wonders if that hasn't been all they've needed from the beginning.

Jacques has stopped a little ways ahead, politely waiting for them all to catch up. When they do, he continues leading them down a series of twisting hallways, each as stately and sweeping as the last, until he comes to one that's lined with numbered doors on either side as far down as the eye can see.

He stops at the seventh one on the right and frowns down in moment of brief bemusement at the oddly-designed locking mechanism, which curls like a spider around the doorknob. Then he turns to her with a playful gleam in his eyes and beckons her forward.

"Vernacularly Fastened Door," he explains, and she recalls with a private thrill what she'd read in _The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations_.

"What's the clue?"

"The volunteer who assigned us the room told me it's the title of a book, the theme of which is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which in this particular context only leads to tragedy."

She blinks at him. "And you don't know this one?"

He grins at her, setting the butterflies in her stomach to dancing again. "All volunteers know this one. The question is, do all librarians?"

"It's _Anna Karenina_ ," says Klaus from behind her, stealing the words right out of her mouth, "our mother read that to me a few summers ago. She said it was the only heavy lifting she liked to do in the hot months."

"Very good, Klaus," she says with what she hopes is a comforting smile as she types in the code. The door clicks open with very little fanfare beyond a somewhat eerie creak, and the five of them stream inside.

They step into a large, but cozy-looking parlor, at the opposite end of which is a wide window that overlooks the cliff the headquarters are set into. Like just about everywhere else so far, it's coated in a thin layer of dust, but that doesn't detract from its loveliness.

There's a well-stocked kitchen to the side, and beyond that, another row of doors that lead to bedrooms. There are three, to be precise, and Olivia guides the girls into one and Klaus into the other. The children are in dire need of showers and fresh sets of clothes, but while nothing can be done about the latter until morning, she insists they handle the former before they settle in for bed.

"But we still have questions," says Klaus, halting at his door.

"A _lot_ of questions," Violet insists. Both of them are stifling yawns, and Sunny is dead to the world on her sister's shoulder again.

"I know you do, Baudelaires," says Jacques, soft and serious as he crosses the room so he can better look them in the eyes, "and I know you've been promised answers before only to have those promises broken, either by intention or circumstance. But if you can last one more night, I'll tell you absolutely everything you want to know in the morning, all right?"

The three children share a long, measured look that seems to speak volumes. It's Violet who finally answers, and when she turns back to look at him her voice is steady.

"We trust you." It's not so much a concession as it is a warning, and it makes something in Olivia's chest swell with pride.

"Get some rest," she says, hugging each child in turn because this, at least, she can do for them, "we'll see you in the morning."

The children bid them goodnight, and then Olivia is alone with Jacques in the parlor, feeling at once more exhausted and more alive than she has in her whole life. It's an odd feeling, but slowly growing more familiar to her the more time she spends around him.

"Tea?" he suggests, and she nods. It's _never_ a bad time for tea, and he makes some of the best she's ever had. _Of course he does._

He disappears into the kitchen, and she takes the time to inspect the window on the far wall. There's not much to see beyond - it's a new moon and subsequently pitch black outside. There's a steep drop below her though, if she remembers the blueprints right - she should be standing on what is essentially the edge of an abyss. The idea is vaguely thrilling, especially since there aren't lions waiting for her at the bottom, and because Jacques isn't dead.

She finds lot of things are improved simply because Jacques isn't dead.

Somewhere behind her, soft music starts to play. She turns to investigate, and as she does she catches sight of her reflection with a jolt of distant horror. The makeup from her Madame Lulu disguise is running in wild streaks down her face, and her hair is in total disarray.

 _Now who's the zombie_ , she thinks, and turns away to go freshen up - only to stifle a shriek of surprise to find Jacques standing where he hadn't been just half a second before. He moves with near catlike silence for someone of his size, and she makes a mental note to be annoyed about it some time when he's not standing so close, looking at her like… like she's… like he -

"Olivia," he says.

"Yes," she replies, not as a question but as an answer, and he smiles at her, quick and playful, before taking her hand and pulling her into a slow, steady waltz. The music is coming from a gramophone in the corner, a sleepy jazz piece she recognizes but can't name.

Together they spin and sway and twirl in perfect, easy harmony, and _like this_ , she thinks, _I want our forever to be just like this._

He pulls her somehow closer than she'd been before, and she rests her head on his shoulder as they slow to a stop in the center of the room. For a while they just stand like that, gently rocking back and forth in time to the music.

"Olaf is on his way here," she reminds him. She hates that the arsonist manages to intrude on this private moment without being anywhere near them, but she needs to know they're safe here. More specifically, she needs to know the _children_ are safe here. Not that she thinks Jacques would have brought them here if they weren't, but still.

"He won't get in," Jacques replies.

She thinks about the ashes of the Baudelaire mansion, and how quickly the tents of the carnival had gone up in smoke. "He might not have to."

"I called Jacquelyn," he says, "there are fierce and formidable volunteers waiting to apprehend that villain and his troupe all along the mountain. If he comes anywhere near VFD headquarters, he'll be caught."

That's… actually quite a relief, she thinks, suddenly overcome. She closes her eyes and tries not to tremble beneath the weight of everything she feels for him.

Somewhere behind them, the teakettle whines. It goes ignored.

"I thought I'd never see you again," she whispers, and feels his hand move from her lower back to cup her head.

"A thousand pardons, ma'am," he says, low and soft like a prayer, "I didn't intend to scare you and I'll never forgive myself."

She sniffs, then laughs a little to cover it, before raising her head to look him square in the eye. "Never?"

His mouth quirks, and she already knows what he's about to say, so she makes a promise of her own instead, pushing up on her toes to cut off his words with a kiss.

 _Don't leave me like that again_ , she thinks as she clutches at his jacket, willing him to understand.

 _Our story isn't over yet,_ he seems to respond, spearing his fingers through her hair to draw her ever closer.

And Olivia smiles against his mouth, because this time she believes it.

 **A/N: IDK what this even is, aside from being a sappy emotional three-shot for a fandom I have no time to write for. Also I heard a rumor that if you attempt to give the Baudelaires a happy ending Daniel Handler physically manifests in your house and kills you on the spot, so I'm posting this from the afterlife, I guess.**

 **Anyway, literally nothing you see here is mine, all of it belongs to the aforementioned Daniel Handler. Fun fact: this is the first project I've ever written without an OC. Hopefully it doesn't suck, but I'm sure y'all will let me know if it does.**

 **Special thanks to lady-stormbraver for her input and also for putting up with me while I ranted about plot holes while she was trying to study.**

 **Don't forget to leave a review!**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Starcrier**.


	2. The Halcyon House

Chapter II

The Halcyon House

Olivia knows she's alone in bed before she even opens her eyes.

For one brief, irrational moment, fear spikes through her, a terror that when she emerges from the blankets, it'll be to the sight of Madame Lulu's tent around her, and to the knowledge that the events of the day before will have been nothing more than dream so perfect it could only ever be just that - an illusion never to touch reality. Jacques will still be dead, the Baudelaires will still be in danger, and she will still be alone.

Keeping her eyes squeezed shut with perhaps a touch more force than is strictly necessary, she extends her hand towards the left of her where she'd hopefully not imagined leaving Jacques last night - only to sigh in relief when she finds the sheets on that side still warm. A vague, hazy memory returns, of being pulled close and held tight, of strength and safety pulsing with every beat of his heart as she'd drifted to sleep.

Now that her mental cobwebs are finally clearing, the scents and sounds of breakfast cooking are filtering in from the other room, where she can detect Jacques' low baritone murmuring to someone. It's probably Sunny, if the responding baby-babble is anything to go by.

Smiling faintly to herself, she eases out of bed and fumbles on the nightstand for her glasses, one of the only personal items she'd had on her when they'd fled the carnival. The contacts had been nice while they'd lasted, but without anything to store them in overnight, she'd been forced to dispose of them.

It takes her only a moment to finagle her hair into a frizzy but serviceable bun on top of her head, after which she fetches a dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and emerges into the main parlor, desperately in need of tea.

The sight that meets her eyes makes her heart clench with an ache she doesn't dare put a name to. Jacques is standing at the stove in the kitchen, expertly flipping pancakes under the watchful eye of the youngest Baudelaire sibling, who is perched on the counter and happily chewing on a carrot. She's got flour streaked on her forehead and the tip of her nose, but doesn't appear to be bothered by it as she makes semi-intelligible attempts at communication.

"Minon!"

"I agree, the batter could use more cinnamon. Good thinking."

Olivia catches his eye as he reaches for it, and tries not to focus overmuch on the smile he gives her because it's still _far too early_ for her stomach to be doing those kinds of acrobatics.

"Good morning, Olivia," he says, and she promptly loses the fight, "There's tea."

She could kiss him for that - and for many other things - but settles for smiling back at him instead.

"There usually is, with you. It's why I stuck around," she says, padding over to pour herself a cup.

"It wasn't for my books?" he says, low and wry as he adds another pancake to the ever-growing stack next to Sunny.

"I suppose that helped," she replies, and he gives a soft huff of laughter.

The infant smiles at her in greeting, baring her four remarkably sharp teeth, and Olivia reaches for a dishrag to clean the mess off her face. They really would have to see about getting some fresh clothes for the children today - the poor dears are still stuck in their carnival outfits. That would be disgusting enough on its own, but she also understands they had formerly belonged to Olaf, which gives them a high likelihood of being disease-ridden.

"Sunny?" The voice that comes from one of the bedrooms at her back belongs to Violet and isn't exactly frantic, but it's close.

"She's in here!" Olivia calls, and a few moments later the two elder Baudelaire siblings emerge, bleary-eyed, in search of their sister. She's not surprised to note that Klaus had apparently moved in with the girls overnight, and in fact is privately grateful for it - the idea of the children being separated after yet another terrifying ordeal hadn't rested well with her.

"She wandered in here this morning in search of breakfast," Jacques explains, "We agreed pancakes were in order. She's helping me perfect my recipe."

"Batch!" Sunny exclaims, seemingly in agreement.

Violet blinks. "You can understand her?"

Jacques gives a small, faint smile Olivia doesn't quite know how to read, but seems to be touched with something like grief. "I have two younger siblings myself," he says, "I did a lot of translating when we were children."

He switches the stove off and brings both Sunny and the plate of pancakes to the bar that separates the kitchen from the rest of the suite, gesturing for the children to take seats at the stools behind it. Olivia busies herself by gathering plates and utensils, and pouring tea for Violet and Klaus.

For a while, they all sit and eat and no one speaks, mostly because the children are very politely inhaling everything in sight. Olivia adds _proper meals_ to the mental checklist she's keeping of things the Baudelaires obviously haven't had in quite some time.

Sunny seems to be enjoying herself the most, digging into the pancakes with her bare hands and getting syrup smeared where flour had been only moments before. Every so often Violet will lean over and tear up the pieces into smaller bites for her, making occasional exasperated noises at the mess she's making while Klaus instigates by passing more syrup when she reaches for it.

Olivia tries not to stare, really she does, but it's difficult when all she's wanted for so long is for these kids to be safe - and happy too, if she could manage it - and right now, in this dusty little kitchen eating pancakes with near-total strangers, they are.

She has to blink several times to keep the tears at bay - but she must not be fully successful at keeping the depth of her emotions off her face, because she feels Jacques' hand, feather-light, touch her lower back as if to offer comfort.

"Will you answer our questions now?" Klaus asks once he comes up for air several minutes later - he'd polished off four pancakes all on his own.

"Of course, Klaus," says Jacques, and the boy practically launches himself out of his seat towards his room. When he reemerges, he's holding _The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations_ that Olivia had brought in from the taxi last night, as well as a stack of torn and crumpled papers bound together with string.

"Duncan Quagmire's notes," Violet explains upon seeing Olivia's curious look, "or what's left of them. Esme hit them with her harpoon gun when she was trying to shoot down Hector's hot-air mobile home. We saved what we could."

Olivia bites back several rather unpleasant comments that are not at all suitable for young ears, comments she'll reserve for the fashionista if they ever meet again. Imagine, being charged with protecting orphaned children and throwing them to the wolves instead… for love of _Olaf_. Flirting with the count had been, without question, the single most revolting thing Olivia had _ever_ had to do, especially since at the time she believed he'd murdered Jacques, but it had all been worth it just to watch Esme Squalor _seethe._

 _Horrible woman,_ Olivia thinks as she sets to cleaning Sunny up again, _she probably doesn't return her library books and dog-ears the pages, too._

"I'm not sure where to start," says Klaus, drawing her from her thoughts as he spreads his papers out across the bar, "there's so much we don't understand."

"VFD!" shrieks Sunny as Olivia takes a damp dishrag to her sticky fingers, and Violet nods.

"She's right - what _is_ VFD, really?"

Jacques gives a soft smile, and that grief from before flashes again, just for a moment, to be replaced an instant later with a familiar, steady resolve. He _believes_ in VFD, Olivia knows, despite its flaws and what he's lost to the schism and the fires, despite the unfortunate events that have befallen his fellow volunteers and the slow deterioration of their ideals. He is determined to do all the good he can in the world, and is determined to believe VFD will prevail. It had been this same determination, ultimately, that had gotten her into his taxi the day she met him, and although she's often been weary and confused and fearful since, she has never regretted it, not once - not even when she'd faced down a pit full of starving lions.

Not even when she thought he'd died.

"That, children," Jacques says, and his back is straight and his eyes are bright and the sheer _nobility_ of him takes her breath away, "is a very good question."

* * *

All in all, it takes him about three hours to cover everything.

The children are as rigidly polite in this as they are in everything else, despite their desperation; no one talks over anyone, no one interrupts, and they actually let Jacques catch his breath in-between answers.

Jacques, true to form, is ever-patient, giving explanations calmly and to the best of his ability. He explains the role of the VFD and the role their parents had played in it, in putting out the fires of the world, in documenting, in researching, in battling ignorance. He explains the schism, although Olivia notes he glosses over the particulars of how, precisely, the figurative fire had broken out in the ranks, and explains the system of recruiting new volunteers and the training they undergo when they join. She listens with rapt attention, being only a fresh volunteer herself, and also because she likes the sound of Jacques' voice and the look in his eyes when he's teaching. As he speaks, Klaus takes careful notes in a pad he'd liberated from one of the kitchen drawers - Olivia will have to see about finding him a nicer one.

There is one subject, however, Jacques refuses to speak about, and she'd known what it would be before the children even get around to asking about it.

"What's inside the sugar bowl?" Violet asks, "Why does Esme want it back so badly?"

"She was looking for it at Heimlich Hospital," continues Klaus, quietly, as though he's remembering something he'd rather not, "she thought we'd taken it."

Jacques has fallen curiously silent, fingering the teacup that has long since gone cold in his hands. It is quite a long time before he speaks again.

"That," he finally says, "is one answer I'm afraid I can't give you."

Klaus makes as though to interject, only to stop as Jacques holds up a hand.

"I promised you an explanation, Klaus," he continues, "but I've also promised to protect you. I have always held that, when faced with the choice between knowledge and ignorance, it is always better to choose the former. In this particular instance, however, trust me when I tell you that you are made infinitely safer in not knowing what's inside that sugar bowl. People have died to protect it and killed to obtain it. I would just as soon not put any of you in that position. All you need to know is that it is vitally important that it never fall into the wrong hands, and that, as of this moment, it's safe."

A stretch of silence follows his statement as the three siblings exchange a long look - they seem to have perfected wordless communication.

"We trust you," says Klaus finally. It's the second time they've made the statement in as many days, and something inside Olivia relaxes.

"We're very glad you do," she says, "and we take it very seriously. Jacques and I are going to do our best to keep you safe from here on out. If," and here she hesitates, because no one's ever really asked them, have they, and it's not like these children have known either of them very long, "if that's something you want."

There's a pause before Violet gapes at her, seemingly incredulous. " _If_ that's what we want?"

"Stick!" says Sunny, and Klaus nods once, a shy, careful smile on his face.

"What my sisters mean is… we'd like that very much."

It comes to Olivia then, with the suddenness of a match striking, that all these children really want, all they've _ever_ really wanted, more than answers or affection or even happiness, is to be _safe_. She wonders at how it's possible that something so sad can give her such hope at the same time.

"That's good," she says, blinking back tears for what feels like the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours, "because I'd like that very much too."

* * *

Things get… well, not precisely _easier,_ from there, but perhaps it all goes a bit smoother, relationally at least.

Olivia hunts down clothes for the children directly after breakfast, relieved to find things that fit each of them reasonably well in the headquarters' room for Various Fakery Disguises. Klaus had needed an extra notch added to his belt and Sunny's dress is perhaps just a tad too long, but anything is better than what they'd arrived in, and the children seem to agree. She'd even managed to rustle up a few hair ribbons for Violet, much to the girl's relief. Olivia herself had unearthed several pairs of trousers for her own use and buried Madame Lulu's skirts way in the back where they hopefully never had to see the light of day again.

Afterwards, Jacques gives them a proper tour of the headquarters, which are somehow even more haunting in daylight, but the children don't seem to notice as they take in everything with wide, fascinated eyes. Violet in particular takes interest in the Vault of Firefighting Devices, where all the volunteers' gadgetry is designed and tested, and Sunny is delighted by the kitchens, which are stocked with recipes and cuisine from all over the world.

"Is there a library?" asks Klaus, and the grin that touches Jacques' face in reply is unlike any she's ever seen before. It's as though all the sadness he carries with him simply melts away for a single, shining moment, and Olivia catches a glimpse of the carefree man he might have been, had the world been just slightly kinder.

"Why Klaus," says Jacques, "I thought you'd never ask."

He leads them down a long, twisting hallway to a massive pair of wooden doors decorated with the symbol of the ever-watchful VFD eye, and throws them open with a great deal of drama.

Olivia can't help her gasp as she steps inside behind the children, swiveling slowly to take it all in. For the record, the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life was, without question, the sight of Jacques' face after he'd saved her from the lions at the carnival and turned out to not, in fact, be as dead as she'd been told.

This, however, is a close second.

The room is sprawling, with shelves lined in either direction as far as the eye can see. Above them are four levels of balconies, with hundreds, if not thousands of more books lining the walls of each. On the wall directly opposite the entryway are a series of stained-glass windows that, much like the one in their suite, overlook the cliff the headquarters are built into. Sunlight, bright and clear, streams in through the colored panes, splashing blues and purples and reds on the couches and plush carpeting directly beneath them.

It's a jarring contrast from the dark, dusty rest of the headquarters - the cloud of neglect and creeping disrepair that has overtaken everything else in the building has left this room almost entirely untouched. The books are immaculately shelved and perfectly aligned, and she can't make out a speck of grime anywhere.

The library isn't just quiet, Olivia observes, stepping farther into the room for a better look, it's _still_ , like the pain and fear of the outside world are not only unable to touch this place, but simply don't _exist_. It makes a strange weight lift from her shoulders that she hadn't even known was there.

"Any information on any genre or subject you could possibly be interested in is here, in this library," says Jacques, "Our volunteers have spent decades collecting it."

"Is it alright if we look around?" asks Violet politely, despite the way she's practically bouncing on her toes - and no wonder, as a section on what appears to be the history of modern machinery is directly to her left. Klaus has already wandered across the room towards the window, fingers skimming the spines of the books as he passes. The poor boy looks like he's walked into a dream and is afraid to wake up.

"Of course," says Jacques, and Violet is gone before he's even finished speaking, baby sister in tow.

Olivia, for her part, doesn't know where to look first, doesn't know what to _say_. There's a bright, bubbly feeling in her chest, so strong it nearly makes her dizzy - which, come to think of it, may actually be because she has yet to stop spinning in her attempt to take everything in.

"Do you like it?" Jacques asks softly.

" _Like_ it?" She's incredulous when she turns to face him. "I want to _live_ here. Our library has to be at _least_ this big or you'll never get me to leave."

She moves towards the enormous card catalog set against the wall, flipping through it with practiced speed. Titles of every subject jump out at her, both familiar and not, all immaculately organized. Her excitement is a breathless, tangible thing, so much so that she almost doesn't register Jacques' reply.

"Our library?"

She glances over her shoulder at him, brow raised. "Jacques Snicket, don't tell me you're not planning on giving me a _library_. I'm a _librarian_. I'd suffer without one." Perhaps she's being a tad dramatic, but libraries are nothing to joke about, even hypothetically.

His mustache twitches like his smile wants to widen but hasn't quite made up its mind yet. "Well, we can't have that. You're sure you want to share one with me?"

She blinks, then turns to fully face him. Does he not remember their conversation in the sheriff's office? Worse, had he assumed she was only teasing? "Who better?" she says, "It's a serious commitment and I already know our philosophical and literary principles are compatible."

She pauses a beat, then steps very, very close to him, so close she can feel his body heat, can reach up and touch his face, can run her fingers along the light stubble on his jaw. "Also," she continues,"if you think I'm going to let you out of my sight ever again after that stunt you pulled in the village -"

Without warning, his hand flies out and pulls her in, pressing her mouth to his. It's firm and quick and deep and then it's over and she rocks back on her heels, dazed nearly out of her wits. She's dizzy for an entirely different reason now as heat rushes to her face.

"Olivia Caliban," he says, eyes bright, "I'd be honored to share a library with you."

 _Well I should hope so,_ she wants to say, _you can't just kiss a girl like that and then_ not _share a library with her._ He'd taken her ability to form coherent sentences with him when he'd pulled away from her, though, so all she can manage is, "A big one?"

"Naturally," says Jacques on a laugh, looking at her with such an openly affectionate expression she feels her heart twist in response. Maybe it's that or maybe it's how happy she is or maybe it's just the fact that he's _alive_ , standing in the world's most beautiful library with her, that propels her back into his arms.

The children are still around and they've all still got a lot of work to do, and Olaf is still out there on the mountain somewhere, lurking. But in this moment, they're together and they're happy and they're making plans to share a library.

And right now, that's all she could possibly want.

* * *

The news comes two days later, not by phone or telegram but carrier bat, which Olivia has to admit she hadn't been expecting.

The sweet little thing is clinging to Jacques' shoulder as he enters their suite, a crumpled note gripped in one hand and an unreadable look in his eyes. "I've just heard from Jacquelyn," he says, and for a moment, nothing else.

The children seem to sense his hesitation, because all three of them look up from what they're doing - Klaus and Sunny from a book about the world's deadliest fungus he'd been reading aloud to her, and Violet from tinkering with the spyglass that had belonged to her parents.

"Is it good news?" the eldest girl asks, and Olivia doesn't miss the dubious expression Klaus makes in response.

"It's… news," Jacques says carefully, "Jacquelyn tells me that Olaf's troupe has been apprehended on their way up the mountain. They're being transported back to the city as we speak to be turned over to the proper authorities."

Olivia feels a wave of relief wash over her for only the briefest moment in response - _finally, some progress_ \- but then she registers what he isn't saying.

Apparently, so does Klaus. "Count Olaf's _troupe_ was captured," says the boy, "but _he_ wasn't."

It isn't a question, but Jacques answers anyway. "No," he replies, "nor was Esme Squalor. I'm afraid they've evaded us yet again."

There's a long moment of silence so heavy it seems to settle on her skin, broken only by the bat on Jacques' shoulder who appears to be fussing for a treat. Olivia gets up to find him one just so she has something to do with her hands.

"But they're alone," says Violet finally, and Olivia is relieved to hear hope in her voice, "Right?"

Jacques smiles at her, softly encouraging. "Olaf and Esme are completely on their own now, yes. Every volunteer from here to Lake Lachrymose is keeping a lookout. It won't be long until we catch up with them."

"Then it _is_ good news," Violet replies determinedly, as though she can make it so through sheer force of will.

"It doesn't matter," says Klaus with unexpected heat, and there's a stormy, exhausted look on his face Olivia has never seen before. "If Olaf is still out there, he'll find us. He _always_ does."

"Klaus -" Violet tries, but the boy appears to have had enough. With a terse, "excuse me," he gets to his feet and very calmly _flees_ to his room. He shuts the door with such quiet control he might as well have slammed it - and Olivia flinches as though he had. She looks over the kitchen bar to Jacques, who is staring at the door with a pensive expression on his face.

"I'll go talk to him," Violet says, very softly. She gathers up Sunny and turns away to follow her brother - and then stops, turns back around.

"Thank you, Jacques," she says firmly, then looks to Olivia, "Thank you _both_. For everything."

It is this, more than anything, that appears to shake her normally unshakeable partner - Jacques jerks to look at the girl as though she'd screamed at him.

"You don't have to thank me, Violet," he says, "I haven't done nearly as much as I should have."

"But you've done _something_ ," she insists, "it's enough that you're trying - not everybody has. And I'm grateful. We all are. Klaus is just..." Violet trails off, not as though she doesn't know the word she's looking for but as though she doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to reveal her brother's weakness.

But it _isn't_ weakness, and Olivia isn't about to allow her to think that it is. "He's scared," she says, "and that's okay."

She can't say the other things she's thinking, because she knows Violet has heard variations of them all before: _no one is ever going to hurt you again, Olaf won't get you, you'll be safe from now on._ Olivia knows, cognitively, that neither she nor Jacques has any way to one-hundred percent guarantee these statements, no matter how much they might mean them, no matter what they'd promised over pancakes. All they can do is plant themselves between the fires of the world and the children they've chosen to protect and do their very, very best to make those promises true.

Violet looks at her for a long moment, and then nods, slowly. "Thank you," she says again, and then disappears into Klaus' room with much more gentleness than her brother had.

For a beat, neither Olivia nor Jacques say anything. She grabs a banana from the fruit basket on the counter and quietly peels it as she moves back into the parlor. Reaching out, she places her fingers under the nose of the bat still clinging to Jacques' shoulder until it gets the hint and transfers to her own arm, climbing up until it's resting just beside her right ear.

"I think that went rather well," says Jacques, lightly. Olivia huffs at him as she breaks off a piece of banana and offers it to the still-fussing creature.

"I know you're being facetious, but I think it actually did," she says, nudging him with an elbow to get him to look over at her. There's a storm in those dear, dark eyes, and Olivia finds it unbearable.

"They've been through so much, and they're being so brave - the fact that they're willing to trust us at all is remarkable. Give them time," she says.

"I should have done more. Perhaps if I hadn't feigned my death at the village -"

"Then you probably actually would be dead right now, and so would I, and the children would still be in peril," Olivia says firmly, and at her second point his gaze seems to sharpen.

 _Yes_ , she thinks with something like fond amusement, _I thought that might get your attention._

"Olaf isn't going to get anywhere near the children. He may be crafty, but he's not half as clever as you. Or me," she adds, just to get him to smile, and is relieved when it works.

"You're the cleverest person I know, Olivia Caliban," he says, and though his words alone could be construed as empty flattery, it's his tone, firm and low and heartbreakingly sincere, that tells her he means every word, "and a truly stunning librarian."

She tries and fails not to flush from both the compliment and the sudden intensity of his gaze. Unable to help herself, she reaches up with her free hand and traces her fingertips along his jawline.

"And you're a brave man with a valid taxi driver's license and a well-curated collection of books in the trunk," she says, repeating words she'd said weeks and a lifetime ago. "You asked me once if I thought that was enough, and now more than ever I know it is. The day is coming when all of our enemies will be defeated, and it's coming _soon_."

He leans in, almost like he means to kiss her, but presses his forehead to hers instead, cups her face in one broad, calloused palm. Somehow, the gesture feels more intimate.

"We're going to protect the Baudelaires," she says, "and we're going to find the Quagmires. All three of them. And then we're going to bring them _home_ , wherever that may be." She feels the weight of her own words slip beneath her skin, settle into her very bones. Jacques dislikes making promises, she knows, even when prompted to do so, but she has never been so cautious. It is hope that gives wings to her words now, hope in herself and in Jacques and in the brave, strong children, both inside this mountain and adrift somewhere in the wild, wicked world outside it.

"Of course," he says, and she can hear in his voice that he believes it, perhaps for the very first time.

* * *

The days slip by like sand through an hourglass, and before Olivia knows it, two full weeks have passed without hide or hair to be found of Olaf and Esme. It's… disconcerting, to say the least.

The stopover at VFD headquarters was only ever supposed to be just that, a stopover before moving on. Jacques' eyes and ears and taxi service are needed in the city, or so Jacquelyn had insisted when she'd called late one evening after the children had gone to bed. Since he categorically refused to leave Olivia or the children behind while he went back to work, they'd been forced to come to a decision. They could ignore the call of their fellow volunteers and continue to hide in the headquarters until the issue with Olaf was dealt with and the outside world was once again safe for the Baudelaires, or they could meet the threats head-on.

There had only ever been one answer Jacques was capable of giving, and Olivia had known what it would be the second he'd gotten the call.

That's why they're here now, standing in the roundabout of the driveway in front of what had once been the burned-out remains of the Snicket mansion.

The house is on the outskirts of the city and is technically quite old, despite having the look of a place that's been recently rebuilt. The stately, weathered structure stands four storeys tall, and is made out of some kind of gleaming grey stone that looks nearly black in the rain. The cracked, pitted driveway is nearly overgrown with weeds, and every window that Olivia can see is boarded up.

 _There was a fire_ , Jacques had said, and nothing more. He hadn't needed to elaborate.

The mansion itself isn't so much ominous as it is… _gloomy_ , although she'd never say as much to Jacques, who looks as though he already knows it. He's regarding the building before them with a weary, almost lost expression; it's the look of a man who'd like very much to get back into his taxi and drive as far away as possible.

They'd discussed doing just that, when the call from Jacquelyn came - but ultimately his nobility had won out, as Olivia had known it would.

He'd spent years rebuilding it, he'd told her as they'd lain together one night in their bedroom at headquarters, curled together so tightly they would have appeared as one body to anyone looking in. In fact, he'd not only rebuilt it, but had poured thousands of dollars into making the whole thing almost entirely fireproof, so that the tragedy that had struck his home once would be hard-pressed to overtake it again.

And that made it the most viable - if not also the most emotionally-taxing - refuge in which to shelter the children for the foreseeable future.

Olivia would be far more excited about it if the whole building didn't look like the physical manifestation of a mournful sigh. She reaches for Jacques' hand only to find him already reaching for her own - she holds on as tightly as she dares.

 _First impressions are often entirely wrong_ , she tries to remind herself, and flashes what she hopes is an eager smile at the children standing at her side. Whatever pain had come before, they now have a chance to make this place their own, a challenge she's going to rise to if it kills her. The children deserve that much, and frankly so does Jacques.

"It's safe?" Klaus asks, and Olivia is slightly surprised to hear nothing of doubt or fear in his voice. It's simply a question, a thirteen-year-old boy asking for reassurance for a fact he already knows. His trust, much like that of his sisters', has only grown in the weeks he has spent under their care, and she's grateful for this small mercy, at least.

She doesn't know what Violet had said to him, that day when they'd heard that Olaf had escaped, but whatever it was had made him emerge from his room later that evening, apologize for the way he'd left, and then throw himself with abandon at _The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations_ like he believed it held the key to every problem known to man or woman.

He's still jumpy, all three of them are, and Olivia knows that none of them are sleeping very well. But they're trying, and that's all she can ask for. It's all she wants, really, aside from them no longer having _reasons_ to be jumpy or sleepless, but there's nothing to be done about that outside of Olaf's capture.

"It's safe," says Jacques simply, "I've spent a long time making sure of it."

Olivia grips his hand tighter in response, and he looks to her with a tight, grateful smile.

"In!" Sunny says, and Olivia urges her charges forward beneath the arch of her polka-dot umbrella.

"I agree, we all need to get out of this rain before we catch our deaths." Together, they huddle somewhat awkwardly towards the front doors, each trying to avoid being soaked by the steadily-increasing downpour around them. Jacques trails behind under his own lemon-yellow umbrella, and Violet moves back to stand next to him to allow her siblings more room beside Olivia.

They enter the front hall as a dripping, shivering group. Olivia is surprised to find her immediate surroundings in a remarkable state of upkeep. There's a thin layer of dust over everything, and all the furniture is covered with sheets that give the place a somewhat ghostly air, but she finds it's nothing at all like the eerie, almost oppressively empty VFD headquarters.

This place feels as though it's simply been _waiting_ , and now that they're here it can get on with things. Olivia loves it instantly.

"Let me give you the penny tour," says Jacques in much the same manner he had when he'd shown them around the headquarters, if not slightly more subdued.

"Take your shoes off and leave them by the front door," Olivia calls behind her as she follows him to a door at their right, "let's not track the wet through the house."

The children do so, and shuffle along behind Jacques in socked feet. She moves for a switch on the wall and is relieved to find the electricity working - light flings itself into what appears to be a rather formal sitting room, with a few well-kept bookshelves and a fireplace, and more covered furniture. On the other side of the room is another closed door, which Jacques leads them through - it empties into a hallway that leads to the dining room, which leads into the kitchen, which leads to a breakfast nook, which leads to a less formal sitting room, which lets them right back out at the front entryway again. Behind them is a grand, sweeping stairwell that leads to the upper floors where the bedrooms are no doubt located, and to the left, opposite the doors to the first sitting room, is a study.

She's proven right about the bedrooms - the stairwell takes them directly to yet another sitting area, framed on either side by corridors that lead to three large bedrooms and two bathrooms each. At the ends of those hallways are two other flights of stairs that both lead to the top floor, where there are three more bedrooms, including the master.

At the very, very end of this floor is a final, rather nondescript door - Olivia knows what's going to be behind it without him having to say anything. Jacques seems to realize this, because there's a gleam of playfulness about his face when he gestures her through it.

She follows, and for a moment is overcome with the almost instinctive sense of peace she gets whenever she enters a library anywhere. The room is cozy, quaint rather than sprawling, but there's still plenty of space for the dozens of bookshelves that line the walls and stretch to the ceiling. The space is towerlike, circular rather than square, and has a ceiling that takes on a conical shape, lending several feet of extra height to it. There's another fireplace along the far wall, and the only window in the room is vaguely oblong, pointed at either end, and boarded up like all the rest. She knows what image it's designed to resemble without having to look.

"There aren't any books," Klaus says, beating her to it by a half-second. He _almost_ manages to avoid sounding disappointed, but doesn't quite make it.

"No," Jacques replies, and for a long beat doesn't say anything else, simply stares off into the middle distance as though trapped in a memory he can't escape.

 _There was a fire,_ he'd said, but he hadn't said where it had started, or what he'd lost. Olivia reaches for his hand again.

He seems to brighten at her touch, and the figurative cloud that had fallen over the room dissipates as though it had never been there.

"Not yet, anyway," he continues, suddenly smiling, "but I think we can all work together to change that, don't you?" This last line is delivered to the children, who all seem delighted at the opportunity to help curate their own personal library.

The tour ends there, although Jacques explains that there is a cellar beneath the kitchen and a greenhouse in the garden out back, which he promises to show them once the weather clears. For now, he has them each pick their own rooms on the second floor, explaining that they'd go into town later in the week to finish furnishing them, and then disappears back outside to his taxi to get the supplies he'd brought for making lunch.

Olivia herself rolls up her sleeves and heads back to the first floor where she'd seen a broom closet, hoping Jacques had thought to keep cleaning supplies stocked here even in his absence. But Jacques is nothing if not prepared, always, and the closet is full of everything she could possibly need to set a mansion of this size to working order. She starts in the first sitting room and moves on from there, taking a feather duster to everything in sight and piling up the furniture covers in a random corner until she can figure out what to do with them.

Eventually, the children join her, despite her protests, and together they tackle the study and the less formal sitting room. It's rather nice, working alongside the children this way - they're so full of light, even now, and she finds she quite enjoys listening to their quiet chatter as they work.

Jacques interrupts some time later, bearing a tray of sandwiches and slightly tepid bottles of root beer. Instead of moving to one of the dining rooms, they simply spread out on one of the furniture covers and eat right there on the floor of the sitting room.

There's no telling how long they all sit like that, relaxing and talking, but Olivia watches the children, watches how the tension seems to leak out of them the more time goes by. _It's funny the effect a home can have_ , she thinks, _dusty though it may be._

And then the doorbell goes off, a shrill chime echoing through the house, and Violet flinches so violently she knocks her root beer over, spilling the sticky liquid all over the sheet beneath them.

"I'm sorry!" she cries, scrambling for napkins. Her brother helps her, and even though he doesn't say anything she can see the furrow has reappeared between his brows.

"It's alright, Violet, we were going to throw these out anyway," Olivia says, aiming a knowing look at Jacques, who returns it. They're doubtless expecting trouble to be waiting at the front door, the poor dears.

"He's early," Jacques says as he stands and dusts off his trousers, "Wait here, children, I'll only be a moment."

Violet seems to freeze, and shares a look with Klaus that's full of something like fear, but is otherwise unreadable. As one, they get to their feet, pull Sunny up between them, and follow after Jacques, completely ignoring his statement.

It comes to Olivia like a lightning strike - they're not just expecting trouble, they're expecting _Olaf_. She wonders how many times they've been right on the edge of being happy, maybe even had the first tendrils of it in their grip, before the count made an untimely appearance and upended everything. Too many, judging by the way Violet had flinched.

Olivia gets up and follows them at once. Jacques hadn't told her he was expecting anyone, but the fact that he had been and hadn't told her means it was probably intended to be some sort of surprise - though what that surprise might be, she couldn't hope to guess. Still, the children are afraid, and Olaf _is_ still lurking around someplace, so she goes with them.

Larry, the waiter, is standing next to Jacques just inside the front door, soaked to the bone and shivering. On either side of him, sitting obediently despite being just as wet, are two fully-grown female Dalmatians.

Olivia blinks once in surprise, then recovers herself and makes for the supply closet where she had seen a few old towels earlier.

"Surely you didn't _walk_ all the way here?" she hears Jacques say as she returns and hands one to their guest.

"Thank you," says Larry, the waiter, dabbing at his face and hair. "I took the trolley," he explains to Jacques, "I just walked from the front gate."

 _It_ is _quite a long walk,_ Olivia muses as she bends down with another towel for the dogs, who make no effort to shake themselves dry and instead wait patiently for her to assist them. One of them licks at her hands as she does, making her laugh.

"Thank you for bringing them. We're taking every precaution while Olaf and Esme are still on the loose," replies Jacques.

"It was no trouble," says Larry, the waiter, "it's been a long time since anyone wanted to requisition one Vigilant Fire Dog, let alone two."

"Well, they _are_ sisters," Jacques murmurs, kneeling down to help her dry them off, "it wouldn't have been right to split them up."

"What's a Vigilant Fire Dog?" Violet interjects from behind them with a smile that holds more than a little relief. The animals are likely a welcome sight when she'd no doubt been imagining Olaf at the door, wearing yet another ridiculous disguise.

"I read about them in _The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations_ ," says Klaus, "They only bark when they smell smoke, and they're trained to get help if there's a fire."

"That's correct, Klaus," says Jacques, tossing a fond look over his shoulder, "and they're very good companions in the meantime."

"Weber!" says Sunny.

"She wants to know their names," Violet translates, edging closer. The Dalmatians wag their tails at her approach.

"This one," says Larry, the waiter, pointing to the dog Olivia is drying, whose tail is solid black as though she'd sat in ink, "is Scylla, and this one," he gestures to the one in front of Jacques with a splotch on her forehead vaguely in the shape of an axe, "is Charybdis. They're the best Vigilant Fire Dogs to go through our training program in a long time."

"You got them for us?" says Violet at the same time as Klaus asks, "You named them after sea monsters?"

"Yes, to both," says Jacques with some amusement, "We wanted you children to feel as safe as possible here, and while I know there are some elements of that that we can't control, there are some that we can. Aside from watching for fires, these dogs are also known to be… rather unfriendly towards intruders."

Olivia looks back down at Scylla, who licks her palm again as if in thanks for drying her off. The sweet thing doesn't look _capable_ of being unfriendly.

A beat of silence passes, where the children just stare at him, seemingly unable to form words - Violet looks like she might be tearing up. How many times, Olivia wonders, has something gone right for them, or even slightly better than expected? How many times was it really Olaf waiting at that door, instead of a kind face or a protective gesture?

Olivia takes the gathering tears behind her own eyes as a signal to intercede before the situation becomes too overwhelmingly emotional, and gets to her feet.

"Larry," she says to the waiter, who is still shivering, "why don't I put a pot of tea on and get a fire going, and you can stay until the weather breaks?"

"Thank you," he says with no small amount of gratefulness, and follows her into the sitting room.

"Oh," he continues, "I'd nearly forgotten to tell you. Jacquelyn's coming by later - she has something to deliver but she wouldn't say what it was over the phone."

"That important?" Olivia muses, really only half-listening. She turns back just in time to see Violet and Klaus - and Sunny, carried by her brother - practically _fly_ across the hallinto Jacques' arms. He goes stiff for only a moment, flashing Olivia a look of mild shock over their heads. She smiles at him in a way that she hopes looks encouraging rather than sappy, and he finally relaxes enough to return their embrace.

And all the while, the dogs sit as watchful, silent guards, one more layer of protection from the fires of the outside world, and the people who would all too willingly set them.

 _Yes_ , Olivia thinks with a soft smile as she turns away, _we're going to be just fine._

* * *

The hours pass quickly as the children and Olivia return to their task of cleaning the house. Even Jacques and Larry, the waiter, pitch in, all six of them working as one unit to make the once-proud Snicket mansion habitable again. It's exhausting work, but not at all unpleasant, especially not once they start playing games to pass the time, like reciting as many lines of poetry as they can, or competing to see who can name the most Shakespeare characters, or trying to outdo one another recalling the strangest titles of books they've read. It's great fun and the competition is fierce with so many well-read people in the room, and it makes the librarian in Olivia blissfully happy.

It gets dark before any of them realize, and Jacques descends once more into the kitchens to rustle up more sandwiches, as they don't have the supplies for anything else and won't until a grocery trip can be made.

The children don't appear to mind though, and neither does Larry, the waiter; the day's work seems to have made them all ravenous. They set up their indoor picnic in the same spot as earlier on cleaner dropcloth, but with tea this time instead of root beer. Outside, the rain has stopped, to be replaced with the usual nighttime sounds of crickets and owls, and, distantly, coyotes.

Olivia is strangely exhausted, and leans back against Jacques as she eats; he settles an arm around her and pulls her closer. The room around her is very warm, and so is he, and her eyelids seem to grow heavier with every passing second.

And then a car door slams outside, and the dogs sit bolt upright, ears pricked, scenting the air. She's wide awake in an instant.

"That will be Jacquelyn," says Larry, the waiter, already on his feet. Jacques presses a swift, firm kiss to her temple and follows him, Scylla on his heels. Olivia looks to the children, ready to console them, but unlike this morning they don't appear concerned, still tucking in to their sandwiches - except for Sunny, who is dead to the world on Violet's lap. The older girl strokes her hair and tosses a bit of bread to Charybdis, who catches it expertly in her mouth. Klaus does the same with a bit of roast beef, and the dog snags that one too, tail wagging.

They still carry tension in their shoulders, and are sitting perhaps a touch closer than they had been before the disruption, but they are leaps and bounds more relaxed than they had been earlier today. _Progress_ , she thinks with a contented smile, and allows her eyes to drift closed again.

"Olivia! Children!" That's Jacques' voice from the front hall, strangely urgent.

She's on her feet and headed for him without even thinking. The Baudelaires and Charybdis are hot on her heels, which means they all crash into her when she screeches to a halt the second she lays eyes on the doorway, and the people standing in front of it.

Jacquelyn is there, looking put-together as ever in a smart business skirt and blouse, but it's the two people at her side that catch and hold Olivia's attention.

"Quagmires?" Violet says, a hitch in her voice.

Duncan and Isadora are standing there, still in their Prufrock Prep uniforms from so long ago. They look thin and exhausted but are otherwise unharmed, and they're smiling, which Olivia counts as a good sign.

"Hello Baudelaires," says Duncan, and in an instant the children are in each others' arms, embracing like they might be torn apart at any moment.

Olivia is right behind them, and the Baudelaires make a hole for her so she can embrace all her favorite former students at once.

"We caught up to Hector over Hotel Denouement," Jacquelyn explains, looking on the scene with a gentle expression, "He waited until he drifted over the roof and then let the children down."

Olivia locks eyes with Jacques and has to quell a comment about _one last time_ , but the look of amused commiseration he gives her tells her he hears it anyway.

"You're a volunteer too, Miss Caliban?" Isadora asks, dashing tears from her eyes. Olivia has to do the same.

"It's a recent development," she says, and nothing else, because the Quagmires have thrown themselves into her arms again.

 _This_ , she thinks, as yet another piece inside her clicks into place, _this is why I volunteered._ Jacques gives her a soft smile, no doubt hearing this thought like he does all the others. She wonders if there might be a few tears in his eyes as well.

She pulls the children ever tighter, presses kisses to whatever crowns she can reach. There's still one child missing, one child still all alone in a world that will do its very best to destroy him - but they'll find him, Olivia knows that like she knows Jacques loves her, or that the sun is going to rise.

They'll find him, and they'll bring him home, and all will be right in the world.

 _It's already pretty close,_ Olivia thinks, and smiles.

 **A/N: Sorry about the wait on this one you guys, I'm a mess. But! It's super long! And the next chapter will probably be even longer! It's fine! (Also, for those of you who are interested, the dogs' names are pronounced** _ **Sil-uh**_ **and** _ **Kuh-rib-dis.)**_ **Hope you enjoyed!**

 **I don't own anything but the dogs, the rest all belongs to Handler the Undeserving.**

 **Once again, a thousand thanks to lady-stormbraver for enduring my transition rants while she was trying to survive college. I would have died without her, true story.**

 **Special thanks also to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed – you guys rock my world!**

 **Don't forget to leave feedback!**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Starcrier.**


	3. The Auspicious Arrival

Chapter III

The Auspicious Arrival

Olivia had known, cognitively, that it would only be a matter of time until Mr. Poe got wind of where the children were staying and made an appearance to check on his "investments", but that knowledge doesn't make the event any more pleasant when it arrives.

The banker shows up, quite uninvited, on a dreary morning about three weeks into their time at Snicket Manor, a wearing his customary bowler hat and a vague, dull smile. A headache instantly hits her right between the eyes.

"Good morning," he greets when she answers the door, apparently unaware of the fact that his presence makes it quite the opposite. "I'm here to see the children."

Olivia is no more impressed by him now than she had been when she'd first visited his office all those months ago - he is still the same coughing, oblivious, inescapably _bland_ person who had so unhelpfully turned her away. She isn't inclined to let him slip so much as a pinky toe over the threshold of this house, but since he _does_ legally have the right to remove the children if he chooses, she is left with no alternative.

That particular outcome, of course, will happen over her dead body, but there's no sense in starting a fight that can be just as easily avoided through tea and an attempt at polite conversation. As E.V. Lucas had once said, there can be no defense like elaborate courtesy.

Olivia leads him to the front sitting room and then goes to rustle up said tea, and also her partner. She's not nervous, because she's literally faced down man-eating lions and come away relatively unscathed, so one persnickety banker really shouldn't be an issue. It's just that since the only _reason_ she'd come away relatively unscathed had been because Jacques had been there, she'd feel much more comfortable with him by her side.

The fact that she's more comfortable with him by her side in just about _every_ situation is neither here nor there.

She sets the kettle to boiling and goes to track down Jacques. When she finds him, he's in the common room on the second floor with Duncan and Isadora and Scylla, engrossed in a study of something spread out before them on the coffee table. Upon closer inspection, she realizes they're looking at a map, covered entirely in spaghetti-like lines that appear to span the city.

"Any luck on the underground tunnels?" she asks, moving closer and placing a hand on Jacques' shoulder. The three of them do this every time they get a call from Jacquelyn announcing a lack of fresh leads on Quigley's whereabouts, trying to narrow down where they thought he might be. The volunteers, who are already spread thin searching for Olaf, have put out feelers in the Hinterlands, the Mortmain Mountains, and even the nearly-abandoned town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea in search of the last Quagmire triplet, while the few members stationed here in the city are leaving clues in every tunnel they search in case the missing boy has taken refuge there. Each clue contains carefully-coded instructions for him to go Mulctuary Money Management so Jacquelyn can bring him home to his siblings.

It's a painstaking process, especially since Olaf is still at large and cannot, under any circumstances, know that Quigley is both alive and unprotected. Every scrap of intel about the child has to be coated in three or four layers of encryption that they'd had to create practically on the spot, since Olaf knows enough to interpret most of the old codes. They can only hope Quigley is skilled enough to decipher them on his own - and his siblings claim that he is.

So far, however, neither hide nor hair has been seen of the boy, and the bags under the eyes of the other two Quagmires only grow more pronounced as the days pass. They'd been almost too stunned to react the night they'd arrived and Jacques had gently, so gently, revealed to them the news that their brother had survived the fire - after several moments of dumbfounded silence Duncan had swayed like a drunken sailor against his sister, who had let out a series of dry sobs that had broken Olivia's heart cleanly in two.

Now, they do nothing but research and wait with a desperation that's honestly beginning to worry her. Olivia gets the feeling they wouldn't eat or sleep if she or Jacques didn't step in and make them. Unlike the Baudelaires, the two triplets are barely recovering, have failed to regain any of the weight they'd lost since being abducted from Prufrock Prep, and are plagued with nightmares on the rare occasions they're able to fall asleep.

Olivia is unable to do anything to truly help them and it's _maddening_ , and now Poe is here, and will no doubt make everything worse.

"I'm afraid not," answers Jacques, drawing her from her thoughts and reminding her that she'd asked a question, "There's been no sign of him anywhere since he left Dr. Montgomery's house quite some time ago." He turns to look at her, and she's reminded then that Isadora and Duncan aren't the only two exhausted by the whole ordeal. As usual, her partner takes too much on himself.

 _Dear man,_ she thinks, wishing they were alone so she could kiss that furrow between his brows away.

"I heard the doorbell," he says before she can work out the best way to reply, "Do we have a guest?"

She purses her lips. " _Guest_ implies he was invited, but yes, I suppose so. Mr. Poe is downstairs waiting to speak to the children."

"Mr. Poe is here?" Klaus' voice comes from behind them, and Olivia turns to see him standing at the entrance to the hallway that leads to the Baudelaire's bedrooms, his sisters and Charybdis in tow.

"Unfortunately," she replies. At her back, Jacques gives a snort of amusement.

"What does he want?" Violet asks. There's an uneasy tension in her shoulders, and in Klaus' too, and at their side even Sunny seems discomfited, burying her face in Charybdis' fur.

Olivia knows she needs to get ahold of the situation, _now_. "I'm not sure," she says with a bright smile, "but he did say he wanted to talk to you children, so it's probably best not to keep him waiting any longer."

"Is he going to take us away again?" Violet returns.

"Absolutely not," Jacques says, beating her to the statement by a half-second with a fierce and formidable look in his eye. "Visits like these are customary whenever children are placed under new guardianship."

He frowns suddenly with the air of a man who is about to ask a very unpleasant question he already knows the answer to. "Surely he's done something like this before? To check up on how you were progressing in your new homes?"

"Never," says Klaus, "Uncle Monty's house was the last time he even came in the front door."

There are… not quite enough words, even with Olivia's solid grasp of the expanse of the English language, for her to express just how very _not okay_ that is. No wonder Olaf hadn't been apprehended before now, when the only thing standing between him and the Baudelaires had been the coughing imbecile downstairs.

 _Lock it down_ , she thinks, even as she trades a look of fury with Jacques, _losing your temper will only make everything worse._

"Well," she says, once she's taken a deep, steadying breath, "he's here now. The sooner we see what he wants, the sooner he'll leave."

"Promise," says Violet, and it's not a question but a demand. There's a challenge in her eyes, on her face, and it turns her features to stone. There's something… quietly familiar about it, a half-drawn sketch of something Olivia _knows_ but can't fully make out.

"Promise us when he leaves, we won't have to go with him," Violet continues.

Jacques moves to stand at Olivia's side, and when he speaks his voice is soft, but resolute. "We promise, Baudelaires. No one is taking you from us today, or ever."

He turns back to look at the Quagmires, who have presumably dealt with Mr. Poe enough to put those wary looks on their faces, but not quite enough to fill them with the same level of dread their friends have. "None of you," he says, and they smile. The Baudelaires don't, but the challenge in Violet's eyes fades away, and with it whatever Olivia had recognized in her face.

There's no time to analyze it further, however, because they're right on the cusp of being rude and despite how very little weight Poe's regard actually holds, they do need to remain on his good side. At least for the moment.

As one, the children, Jacques, the dogs, and herself return downstairs to greet the banker in the front sitting room with polite - if strained - smiles. Mr. Poe himself looks harried, and returns their smiles with an impatient one of his own. No doubt they're setting back his very busy schedule, Olivia thinks with a discreet roll of her eyes.

She goes to fetch the tea from the kitchen and returns to find that by some wordless agreement, all five of the children have taken their seats on the sofa in the center of the room. The front parlor is quite large and there's plenty of space to spread out, but Olivia gets the sense this huddle is one of solidarity. Klaus has his fingers in a vice-grip around Isadora's, who mirrors the action with Duncan on her other side, while Violet pulls Sunny onto her lap and holds her there like an anchor. The infant herself gnaws on a brightly-colored teething toy and observes Poe with an expression of such profound distaste Olivia almost wants to laugh.

Scylla and Charybdis, apparently acting on instinct, take positions on the rug in front of the children, ears pricked in wariness at sight of this interloper. Mr. Poe regards them both with a similar amount of distrust.

 _Let's just get through this,_ Olivia thinks as Jacques gives her an encouraging smile, warming her insides faster than the tea she's pouring. She serves Mr. Poe first, watches in horror as he dumps an unholy amount of cream and sugar into his cup, and then serves Jacques and the children.

She nurses her own cup as she quietly takes a seat in a chair beside Mr. Poe, while Jacques perches himself on the armrest nearest to Duncan. Her partner's expression is slightly tense but otherwise unreadable.

Poe coughs once, wetly, and the dogs prick their ears higher. He flinches visibly at the movement.

 _Must be more of a cat person,_ Olivia thinks, not at all vindictively.

"This is… a lovely home you have here, Mrs. Snicket," begins Poe, with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. Olivia promptly chokes on her tea.

"Cal - _Caliban_ ," she corrects once she recovers herself, very carefully _not_ looking at Jacques, "It's Caliban. _Miss_ Caliban."

"Ah," says Poe, as his expression slips into something faintly disapproving, "Yes. Well. I've only come to check on the children. As Vice President in charge of Orphan Affairs, it is of course my solemn duty to make sure that the Baudelaires and Quagmires are safely settled."

 _Oh_ now _he cares about that,_ Olivia thinks darkly, taking another sip of tea to keep from speaking aloud. He certainly hadn't seemed to be overly concerned with this particular aspect of his job the first time she'd met him.

"We are," Violet insists. Olivia thinks there might be a touch of desperation in her gaze. "We're quite happy here, thank you."

"That's all well and good, Violet," says Poe, "but I'm afraid happiness is only one part of it. You _are_ living in the home of a man whom you recently accused of trying to abduct you in a plot to steal your fortune, after all."

"Count Olaf wanted to steal our fortune, not Jacques, and we didn't accuse him, _you_ did," Klaus says tersely. Charybdis sniffs the air at his tone, searching for a threat.

"Klaus," Jacques says, very softly, and the boy settles. Olivia flashes her partner a grateful look. The banker does the same, as though assuming Jacques is on his side in this.

"Yes, well it was a very convincing disguise, at any rate. Although why Mr. Snicket dressed up as Count Omar -"

" _Olaf_ ," all five children correct at once, _coincidentally_ at the exact time of another of Poe's coughing fits.

"- in the first place, I still don't understand. After all, the Baudelaires did try to kill him because he bore such a strong resemblance to the count, though they were apparently unsuccessful," the banker continues, sipping at his tea as though to recover himself and openly grimacing at the taste before setting it aside.

Olivia is _not_ going to dump her own cup in his lap. She isn't. She's not even thinking about it all that hard, really. It's just that he's wearing a very nice suit and it's difficult to _not_ take into account about how easily it could be ruined, that's all.

"The children didn't try to kill anyone, Mr. Poe," she says evenly, only able to do so once she has taken two or three deep, settling breaths, "Count Olaf disguised Jacques as himself, believed he killed him, and framed the Baudelaires for his murder. The villain was alive and well at Caligari Carnival. You saw him, you were there."

"You watched him nearly kill Olivia," Jacques supplies, and there's a strange note in his voice she can't quite read. If she didn't know better, she would have called it anger. She aims a quelling look at him, and he responds with a challenging raise of his eyebrow, as if to say, _what, he did._

She raises her own in response. _He also would have stood by while you were burned at the stake, but_ I'm _staying calm._

His other eyebrow goes up. _Touche_.

Poe only coughs again, and consequently misses the way Violet tosses her head back against the couch in exasperation. Olivia has to bite back another laugh.

"Yes, well, now that I've been able to ascertain for myself that the children have arrived safely, and are not, in fact, murderers," he says when he's once again swallowed back his phlegm, a sound that makes her stomach churn, "I can take this time to ensure you properly understand the rules."

"What rules would those be, Mr. Poe?" Jacques asks.

"Well, just the one, really. The Quagmire and Baudelaire fortunes are not to be touched until Violet and the twins are of age. No amount of scheming on your part will get their money into your hands, I assure you." He says this with that is probably supposed to be an encouraging wink at the children, who stare at them blankly. As though it was their _fortunes_ they'd been concerned about, rather than their lives.

There is… a _lot_ to unpack in those two sentences, and a lot she could strangle him for, but one thing in particular cannot go unaddressed.

"Triplets," Olivia bites out, fingers tightening around her cup. _It would be a waste of tea, don't do it Olivia, it's not worth it..._

"Beg pardon?" For his part, the banker doesn't seem to realize his misstep, and is looking at her as though he is honestly confused… and perhaps just a bit stupid.

"The Quagmires are _triplets_ , please refer to them as such."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous Miss Caliban, the death of their brother changes their birth identity."

That's easily the most moronic thing Olivia has ever heard, and considering she'd worked under Vice Principal Nero, whom she's pretty sure was illiterate, that's saying something.

Poe's statement appears to be all Isadora, sweet, levelheaded Isadora, can handle - Olivia realizes what's about to happen two seconds before it does. And she _gets_ it, really, and in any other scenario she'd be inclined to sit back and let the girl loose on the banker, but not on this subject, and certainly not right now.

She looks to her partner, who reads her mind with his usual ease.

"Quigley is -" Isadora all but shouts, only to be swiftly cut off, bless Jacques and his impeccable timing.

"Quigley Quagmire is gone, yes, but that's no reason to forget his memory," he says, quite calmly.

Duncan and Isadora, the poor dears, jerk to look at him with an expression of such deep betrayal that it cuts Olivia to the core. She coughs gently to get their attention, then slowly taps the base of the ring finger of her left hand, before inclining her head at Poe. They frown at her for only a moment in confusion before her message seems to connect, as she'd known it would. They're very clever children, after all.

Eleanora Poe, that horrible cow, would have the news of Quigley's survival published in _The Daily Punctilio_ within the hour if they let it slip to her husband now. Aside from Olaf himself, there is literally no worse person on earth to reveal that information to, and Olivia watches Isadora's face go white with the knowledge of what she'd almost done. She leans across the table to pour the girl more tea just so she has an excuse to brush her hands with her own, a subtle gesture of comfort.

"I suppose that follows," says Poe with the reluctance of a man who doesn't much like to be outmaneuvered, despite the fact that it must happen on an hourly basis.

"Now then, Mr. Poe," Olivia continues before the situation can get any further out of hand, "I assure you, we have no interest in either the Baudelaire or the Quagmire fortunes. We only want to give the children a safe, happy home. My - um, Mr. _Snicket_ is quite wealthy enough on his own, you see, and I'm an experienced librarian who can work anywhere in the city if the need arises."

"I see. That's certainly a relief to hear," says Poe. His expression has cleared now that his work appears to be over - nevermind that she and Jacques could be lying, could be threatening the children into complying and he hadn't bothered to dig any deeper beyond their word. Not for the first time, she wonders what the Baudelaire parents in particular had been thinking, entrusting the care of their children to a man like this.

Olivia has never been so glad to see someone get to his feet before. The children all but leap upright as well, as though in hopes this will get him to leave faster, but unfortunately and to no one's great surprise, he isn't done.

"I know these children have a horrible track record and can be quite the handful, but it's good to know that there are still people willing to make room in their lives for today's troubled youth," says Poe.

Olivia doesn't trust herself to reply, not with the way her hands are actually shaking with rage, and takes another huge sip of tea to keep from doing something that could jeopardize the children's stay here - although at this point she's honestly beginning to wonder if _anything_ could.

But Jacques, as ever, has her back. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Poe," he says, reaching forward to take the banker's hand in a grip that's likely just a touch too firm, if the way he winces is any indication.

"Of course. A city-appointed social worker may be along soon to do a brief follow-up, but everything seems to be in order here. If you or the children ever need anything, know that you can always contact me at Mulctuary Money Management, so long as it's within regular banking hours." He flashes a wan smile at the children then, and, seemingly on impulse, reaches out as though to awkwardly pat Klaus on the shoulder. It's a mistake.

The dogs lunge forward and _snarl_ , hackles raised. Charybdis snaps at his outstretched hand, although Olivia knows she isn't actually trying to bite him or she'd have done so. It's a warning, clear as day: _do not touch._

 _Good girls_ , she thinks.

Poe leaps back with a shriek loud enough to shatter glass, nearly tripping over himself to get clear. Jacques whistles once, sharp and shrill, and the dogs settle immediately, taking seated positions once more in front of the children.

 _Unfriendly towards intruders_ , Jacques had said, and she'd doubted him.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Poe," Olivia says, in a way she hopes sounds sincere, "they're very protective. One can never be too careful when villains like Count Olaf are lurking about." She flashes him a winning smile, and watches with no small amount of gratification as he stammers out some kind of goodbye before all but fleeing both the room and the house.

She follows at a much more sedate pace, mood lifted considerably, and shuts and locks the front door firmly behind him. For a moment, she presses back against it, tipping her head against the dark wood, and tries to regain her bearings. The nerve of that man, coming into her home uninvited to insult her partner and her children…

 _Jacques should have let Charybdis bite him_ , she thinks, perhaps a touch unkindly, but _honestly_.

"I'm sure he _means_ well," Jacques says, somewhat dubiously. She opens her eyes to find him watching her with no small amount of amusement from the entryway to the sitting room. The children peer out from behind him curiously.

Olivia narrows her eyes. "A jar of _mustard_ probably also means well," she says, "and would very likely do a better job of protecting children from Count Olaf."

At this, he lets out a laugh that makes her stomach swoop, all of the stress of the morning fading away to something sweet and serene.

 _Mrs. Snicket,_ Poe had called her, unaware that it wasn't true. Unaware how much she… well.

There's no time to dwell on it. She turns to the children, all of whom look as though the last hour has drained them in every possible way. It's unacceptable.

Good thing Olivia has a foolproof remedy for things like this.

"Now then," she says, clapping her hands together with a bright smile, "who wants to go to the bookstore?"

* * *

The days pass, the weather warms, and the library continues to grow. Olivia spends most of her time there now, meticulously organizing every book they bring in. Bookstore trips happen as often as three or four times a week, and she always brings the children with strict instructions to pick out as many books as they want.

Slowly but surely, the shelves begin to fill. It's among the more beautiful things Olivia's ever had the pleasure to witness. So too is the sight of the Baudelaires, who are far from recovered from their many trials but trudge along the path to peace as steadily as the inventory of the library increases. She wonders if there isn't a correlation.

It's Klaus, predictably, who is most fond of this room, and when he's not helping her shelve books or organize the catalog, he can be found curled up in an armchair by the fire, a stack of novels piled beside him. He might be the only person Olivia has ever met who can devour books as fast as she can, if not faster.

Violet helps in the library when she's needed, but has more recently taken to dividing her time between the self-made workshop she'd constructed in the sitting area of her bedroom and the garage, where she can often be heard tinkering from breakfast until well after dark. Olivia has a suspicion that this is how Violet is choosing to deal with her grief, by pulling apart and piecing back together and rewiring whatever Jacques gives her permission to. Her additions to the library are usually instruction manuals and books on the sciences, as well as mechanics, engineering, and most recently, theoretical physics.

Sunny has perhaps adjusted the fastest out of all five children, and seems to be content as long as she's in the close vicinity to at least one of her siblings, or occasionally the dogs. She sleeps quite a lot, even for a toddler, which Olivia imagines is a response to the sheer exhaustion of the past months of her life. She's taken to keeping a nest of blankets and pillows and a teething toy or two in the corner of the library for whenever Sunny wanders up here, and has already got a bookshelf dedicated to beginning readers for when the girl eventually learns how.

It's Isadora who keeps the poetry section stocked nearly to overflowing, and Duncan's contributions are usually biographies and any and all forms of historical nonfiction, but unlike the Baudelaires, this sanctuary doesn't really appear to be _helping_.

And they do make use of the library, of course, especially in their search for Quigley, but they never quite manage to _settle_ , even with regular meals and sleeping hours, even surrounded by people who care for them. They _are_ trying, and that's all Olivia can ask for until Quigley is found, but it breaks her heart to watch. All she can do is make them as comfortable as possible and lend a listening ear when they need it, and give them space when they don't.

Olivia often finds herself working late into the evening, soothing her worries over the children and the stresses of managing the house by arranging the shelves to her satisfaction. It's her self-appointed happy place, and the only thing she's really missed from her time at Prufrock. That's part of why she's here now, even though it's almost midnight, and also because they'd gone on yet _another_ bookstore raid earlier this afternoon and she's up to her ears in fresh inventory.

Olivia sighs to herself, takes in the frankly monstrous number of books still stacked in sweeping piles around her, and considers leaving the rest of the work for tomorrow. It _is_ getting quite late, and the children have been asleep - or in bed, at least - for quite some time now.

But she's still not quite tired enough to wind down, and the gramophone in the corner _just_ clicked over to one of her favorite pieces, and she'd been about to start working on the contemporary literature section.

 _Just a few more minutes,_ she thinks, absently adding another book to the stack balanced perfectly on her head until she can work out precisely how she wants to process it.

It's a balmy night, and the room has the strangest tendency to get a tad musty, so she'd found a stepstool and opened the single eye-shaped window set into the back wall. It's not much by way of ventilation, but it's something - not for the first time, she wonders why Jacques wouldn't have put more windows in this room, of all places, when he rebuilt the mansion.

As though summoned by her thoughts, she hears his voice from the doorway behind her, low and warm. "What are you still doing up?"

She turns carefully, still balancing the books on her head, and smiles to see him leaning against the doorframe and watching her. He's so handsome that it takes her breath away, sometimes.

"Books," is all she says, gesturing to the piles scattered around her. "And I might ask you the same question."

"Research," he replies, but doesn't elaborate. He doesn't need to - every day Quigley goes unfound, weight seems to press a little heavier on his shoulders.

 _Dear, stubbornly noble man_ , she thinks, not for the first time. She wishes there was more she could do for him. She wishes there was more she could do in general.

It's been… odd, adjusting to living with each other at the same time as they adjust to living with five children in various stages of recovery. Finding time alone together is a challenge, especially with his undercover work as a taxi driver and her work of caring for the children and the house and the library. The two of them haven't shared much more than a few pecks on the cheek as he leaves in the mornings or gentle smiles over meals or the occasional eyebrow-conversation, which is a relatively new talent of theirs that often comes in handy when discussing sensitive matters around the children.

She misses him, she realizes, misses having just a bit of him to herself, as they had at the beginning. She wouldn't trade any of what they have now for that, of course, not even a moment of it, but she can't help wanting.

Jacques pushes off from the doorframe, steps further into the room. "Why don't you come to bed, Olivia," he says, "the rest can wait until morning."

He misses her too, she understands suddenly, and the knowledge splits her face in a grin. It's… _really_ niceto be wanted. She'd never known what that felt like, before.

The knowledge makes her giddy and a wave of playfulness overtakes her. She takes a step backwards for every step he takes forward, maneuvering expertly around the room despite the books on her head and the clutter on the floor.

"Oh, but there's still so much," Olivia teases, "I wouldn't dream of going to bed until it's _all_ done."

He makes a playful grab for her but she neatly leaps over a discarded stack of pillows, all without ever tipping the books she's carrying. She's a _very_ good librarian, after all.

"Olivia," he says, and something deeper, richer, curls around the vowels of her name, making heat spread to her face, "come to _bed_."

 _Well when he says it like_ that _…_ she thinks, but continues to back away even as he continues to advance. When he's looking at her the way he is now, she can almost understand the women she's read about in storybooks, the ones who swooned at the attentions of broad-shouldered, mustachioed men. She'd always laughed, before, but it's not so funny now that her own knees are threatening to buckle.

Their gentle game of chase ends when her back hits a bookshelf in the newly-appointed classic poetry section. She grins up at him, bites her lip, raises her eyebrows.

 _What now, Mr. Snicket?_

He doesn't reply, however; instead he merely reaches up and removes the books perched on her head before setting them aside. When he turns back to her, she finds she can't help herself, and cuts off whatever he'd been building up to with a press of her mouth against his own.

Time slows, stops altogether. When they part for air minutes and an eternity later, they're both breathing heavily. She's never seen anything on earth like the expression on his face, but whatever it is, it's deep and strong, and she has to fight not to kiss him again.

"Are you happy here?" she blurts, not fully certain where the question is coming from, but realizing instantly that she needs to know. "In this house, I mean? It doesn't... hurt you to be here?"

She should have asked long before, she realizes, but the children's pain had been so much more prevalent, so much easier to pinpoint and address. Jacques' hurt has always been a slippery, elusive thing, easily hidden, easily brushed off. It's a skill he's no doubt spent years developing, but that was before he knew _her_.

There's a long, long silence as Jacques looks at her, studying her face. One of his hands moves from her waist to cup her jaw. He strokes a thumb over the skin there. "It does," he says simply, "My siblings and I loved this house, and after it was destroyed everything seemed - and often was - quite dismal for a long time."

Her heart sinks. _Dear man,_ she thinks again, leaning forward to tip her head against his.

He's not done, however. "But then," he says, and there's a curious, playful glimmer in his eyes now, "the strangest thing happened."

"And what was that?"

"I nearly hit a woman with my taxi, and she still agreed to scale a building with me," he says, and when she laughs he kisses her again like he can't help himself.

When he pulls back, he's smiling in that gentle, soft way of his. "And I knew then that I'd be happy wherever she was."

"Even here?" she asks, knowing the answer but needing to _confirm_ , and he nods.

"Even here." There's a kind of desperation behind his words that makes something jerk in her chest. Jacques never draws his eyes from hers, never takes his hand from her face as he silently begs her to understand.

And she _does_ understand, she always has. She can't pick the minute or the date when she'd first realized, or if it was even much of a realization at all; maybe it just came to her between one blink and the next, as easily as breathing. Maybe it's just always _been_.

And maybe one day, when all their enemies have been defeated, they'll be able to tell each other plainly instead of coding it behind tender caresses and layered meanings and this iron-forged devotion they share. But until that happens, Olivia knows saying it out loud would be like daring the universe, and that's not a game of roulette she's willing to play. Not when she's already lost him once before.

"Good. Because I'm happy too," she says, and lets him hear the message in her own words.

And then his mouth is on hers again, kissing her stupid, and neither of them say anything else for a long time after that.

* * *

Olivia snaps awake to the distant growling of dogs and Jacques' hand on her shoulder.

"Someone's outside the house," he murmurs, and the urgency in his tone sends chills skittering down her spine.

It's pitch black in their bedroom, save for a few streaks of moonlight playing peek-a-boo through the windows, splashing eerie, twisting shadows on the walls and floor. He's impossible to make out in the darkness, especially without her glasses - she fumbles for them on the nightstand, slipping them on in time to see the dark blur of her partner slide from the bed and move to the door. Moonlight flashes on something in his hand, glinting gold.

 _His spyglass,_ she thinks, reaching for her own as another thought follows on its heels, _Olaf_.

She propels herself from the bed and follows him out, hot on his heels as he descends the stairwell that leads down into the Baudelaire's hallway. Everything is deathly still, the silence of the massive house broken only by Scylla and Charybdis growling at something on the first level.

They reach the children's floor in record time. Horror, cold and sharp as a winter wind, abruptly seizes her by the throat - each of their rooms are standing open and empty.

"Baudelaires!" she whispers, "Quagmires!"

"Olivia?" That's Violet's voice, thank the stars, echoing from the looming darkness at the end of the hall.

The panic recedes instantly, leaving her lightheaded with relief - she takes Jacques' hand to steady herself. The pair of them emerge into the sitting area to find all the children huddled there, bleary-eyed and shaking as they peer down the stairwell to the first floor. The windows in the common room are set high on the walls at their backs, spilling eerie, blue-grey moonlight down the steps.

Another chill sweeps down her skin, and tightens her grip on Jacques' hand.

Scylla and Charybdis are still snarling somewhere in the dark, which isn't a good sign, but they aren't barking, which is. At least whatever prowler is lurking outside doesn't appear interested in setting any fires. Not yet, anyway.

"It's Olaf," says Klaus, dully, "I told you he'd find us."

"We don't know that," says Olivia, despite having had the same thought. She looks to Jacques in a wordless request for him to back her up, but he's not looking at her. He's staring down the steps the way the children had been, and a muscle jumps in his jaw from how tightly he's clenching it.

"Stay here," he tells the children, then shakes his head. "No, in fact, go upstairs to our bedroom and wait there. Lock the door, and if we don't come to get you in fifteen minutes, use the phone on my nightstand to call Jacquelyn. The number is taped on the underside of my desk."

"But-" Isadora tries, only to be cut off by Jacques stepping closer, leaning down.

"Children," he says, looking at each of them in turn, "do you trust us?"

"We do," says Violet without hesitation, and Klaus nods his agreement. Olivia thinks, _progress_ , with a flash of joy so intense it nearly brings tears to her eyes despite the gravity of the situation.

Duncan and Isadora, however, are slower to reply, for reasons she can't hope to guess but doesn't think have much to do with herself and Jacques at all. It's a long, tense moment before they give an answer.

"We trust you," says Duncan finally, and takes his sister's hand. He doesn't sound like he quite believes his own words, but he _does_ sound like he wants to. It's enough, and all they can ask right now.

"Then we need you to go," he says, looking at them all with a kind of firm affection, "We'll come get you the moment it's safe."

The children nod solemnly, wary but willing, and disappear down the Quagmire's corridor to make for the stairwell that will take them to the third floor. Jacques and Olivia watch them go, then, as one, descend into the blackness below.

"What if it _is_ Olaf?" Olivia whispers. The feeling of being in the dark in both the figurative _and_ literal sense is incredibly unnerving.

"Then we end it," Jacques says firmly, and she nods in a way she hopes he can tell is supportive.

They follow the sounds of the dogs to the very front of the house, where Scylla is jumping at the front door and Charybdis is pacing back and forth between the sitting room and the study, hackles raised. Jacques whistles and they fall back, quiet but no less ready to attack should he give the order.

In the same second, six quick knocks in a strange pattern split the air, and Olivia jumps, slapping a hand over her mouth to stifle a yelp. Jacques, however, freezes, eyes wide, in a way that she knows isn't from fear but from genuine surprise.

Without further hesitation strides to the front door and unceremoniously flings it open. Light spills into the entryway from the security lamps in the roundabout, for a moment obscuring the face of the person standing just outside the threshold. Then the figure leans just a bit closer, revealing a shockingly familiar face.

"Madame _Lulu_?" Olivia says, incredulous.

"Kit?" Jacques says at the same time. The pair of them exchange bewildered looks with one another before turning back to the woman at the door.

She looks just as noble and determined and fierce as Olivia remembers from all those weeks ago at the carnival, before the woman had shoved a disguise at her and driven off in Jacques' taxi in search of the sugar bowl. The only difference is that now she's noticeably pregnant, probably six or seven months along, and appears to be exhausted enough to collapse at any moment.

"Hello Jacques," says Lulu, or Kit, or whoever she is, "I found what you sent me for."

Olivia thinks, _No_ , and actually moves to step forward to keep her out, because there is no way she's letting the sugar bowl inside this house, not with the trouble it will bring, not when she's got five people who are far more precious to her hiding upstairs. But then the woman steps aside and Olivia freezes abruptly, because how did Duncan get all the way down - _Oh_.

Beside her, Jacques sucks in a sharp breath. Olivia steps forward, extends a hand to the child on the porch, and tries to remember to breathe.

"Hello, Quigley," she says, and smiles.

* * *

The Quagmire's reunion is, quite unsurprisingly, a tearful one - Jacques lets them use his study to have some privacy to catch up. Scylla and Charybdis follow them in, sniffing at Quigley curiously and licking at the tears on his sibling's faces, and Olivia feels comfortable leaving them alone, at least for the moment. The Baudelaires are in the sitting room across the hall dozing off on each other's shoulders, happy for their friends but unable to keep their eyes open - and no wonder, since the clock on the mantel reads half-past three in the morning.

Olivia presses kisses to each of their foreheads as she passes them to enter the kitchen. Jacques is preparing tea for the woman, whose real name is apparently Kit, seated at the bar. She silently devours a plate of cookies while she waits, and studies the room around her with an unreadable expression.

Jacques, for his part, has barely said two words since the woman arrived, but it doesn't feel awkward, merely contemplative, as though he's not quite sure what to do with her. Olivia doesn't know what to make of it.

Still, she smiles when he presses a teacup into her hands, brushing her fingers against his for reassurance. He smiles gently back, and pushes another cup across the counter to Kit, who nods gratefully and gulps it down at once, heedless of the way it must be scalding her tongue. Olivia winces.

The silence is interminable. She's likely missing something here, but she's far too tired to try to parse out what that might be, and there are questions that need answering.

"Where did you find him?" Olivia asks, blowing on her tea to cool it.

"I didn't," says Kit, "Widdershins did. Somehow the poor boy fell into the Stricken Stream while he was trying to get to Headquarters. Fortunately _The Queequeg_ was nearby."

Jacques lifts an eyebrow in surprise. "Quigley made it that far all on his own? How did he even know about VFD Headquarters?"

"He's a Quagmire. They always were a determined bunch - he told me he's been doing research since his home burned, trying to catch up to his siblings. It was inevitable he'd stumble upon some of our secrets, given how tangled everything's become," says Kit, rubbing at the space between her eyes as though trying to relieve a headache. "Anyway, Widdershins got in touch with Dewey, who called me. I picked him up on Briny Beach."

"Thank you for bringing him," says Olivia. "Isadora and Duncan have been beside themselves."

Kit only nods, visibly too exhausted to verbally reply to anything that doesn't demand it, and sips at her tea. Jacques shifts.

"And the sugar bowl?"

"Safe," says Kit, and nothing else, for which Olivia is grateful. The less she knows - the less any of them know - about the whereabouts of that infernal thing, the better.

"Where will you go, now that Caligari Carnival is gone? I'm sorry I couldn't salvage much from your tent - the fire spread too quickly, and we had to get the children out of there and to Headquarters before Olaf reached it," Olivia says.

Kit waves her off, not quite meeting her eyes. "It's alright. In this job, you learn not to get too attached to material things."

 _This from the organization that had a schism over a sugar bowl,_ Olivia thinks, but doesn't say.

Kit continues, "I'm heading back to Hotel Denouement in the morning, where I hope to remain until the baby comes. After that, my assignment will depend on where I'm most needed." She aims a wry look at Jacques. "We can't all land comfortable city assignments."

"You're more than welcome to stay here tonight, we have plenty of room," Olivia says.

Kit goes abruptly stiff. "If it's all the same to you, I've got a safehouse deeper in the city, and I'd prefer to crash there. This place… has too many memories."

Olivia is confused for only an instant - but then Kit tilts her head into the light and it connects, her words and her bearing and the set of her jaw and the shape of her deep, dark eyes that Olivia knows nearly as well as her own.

"You're a Snicket," she says, before jerking to look at Jacques, who tenses. "You _said_ your sister was looking for Quigley, I didn't even think…"

"He didn't tell you?" Kit says, looking between the two of them with some amusement. The expression makes their resemblance even more obvious. "We're twins."

Olivia frowns. "Jacques, I thought you said you had two _younger_ siblings."

"Well, technically - " he begins, only to be cut off by his sister's groan.

"Four minutes, Jacques. You are the oldest by _four minutes_. You have _got_ to stop telling people I'm your younger sister when we're literally exactly the same age."

She aims an exasperated look at Olivia that might be faintly touched with fondness, somewhere. "He's done this since we were children, and it always made Lemony laugh so of course he never stopped."

Olivia wonders if, at least on some level, she ought to be hurt at the idea that he hadn't told her any of this, but the look in his eyes gives her pause.

He'd been protecting Kit, she realizes, not necessarily from _her_ , but just in general - he'd likely been doing it for so long, dancing around the subject of his siblings and the details of their lives that he probably hadn't even intended to do it with her. Or if he had, he's more than entitled to do so. Olivia wants him to trust her with this, of course she does, but she knows she has no right to demand it. She will take any burden he's willing to share with her, hide any secret he needs to her to keep, and be respectful of what he withholds.

They're partners, but that's a process, and so is loving a deeply guarded, deeply wounded man who likes to pretend he isn't either one of those things.

Olivia takes another bracing sip of tea, and eyes Jacques over the rim of her cup with a gentle smile that she hopes conveys her acceptance. "Your brother's name is Lemony?" is all she says.

Something in him seems to visibly unwind. "Yes. He actually _is_ younger, by about two years. I haven't heard from him in… quite some time."

He looks to his sister, an unspoken question in his eyes, but she shakes her head. "I've been looking. That's why I asked for the position of Madame Lulu in the first place, to catch any messages he might try to send before anyone else did, but there's been nothing."

"When did you see him last?" Olivia asks, and the two siblings share a look she can't hope to try to decipher.

"It's been years since we were able to meet in person - he was framed for a series of arson charges that Olaf was ultimately responsible for and has been on the run ever since. He took to sending us increasingly obscure messages whenever he could, assuring us he was alive, if not always well, but the last one came about a week before..." he trails off, running his fingers absently over a groove in the countertop and staring into space. She draws closer, lays a hand on his arm in support.

It's Kit who continues, however, and there's a cold, remote sort of look on her face that Olivia doesn't know the reason for but gives her chills all the same. "He last made contact about a week before the Baudelaire mansion burned down. No one's heard from him since. For all we know, he could be dead."

Olivia frowns, studies each of the siblings, tries to read between the lines. "Do you… think _he_ started the fire?"

Jacques jerks out of his trance as quickly as though she'd doused him in ice water. "No," he says, as though the thought had honestly never crossed his mind, "he'd set himself on fire before doing a thing like that, especially to the Baudelaires."

"Then why do you suppose he hasn't made contact since?"

"Lemony was, and in all likelihood still is, desperately in love with Beatrice Baudelaire," Kit says flatly, "him and every other man that ever knew her, actually, except she loved him back. That's why she married Bertrand."

That… makes no sense. "What?"

"We don't get it either," says Kit, "Lemony never explained, and Beatrice made herself scarce, after. She and Bertrand were still active volunteers, but they had very little interaction with the rest of us, and no one in the organization ever so much as visited their house, or met their children. That's why it took everyone so long to find them after their parents died."

She's silent for a moment, sipping at her tea, before continuing. "Anyway, Lemony was devastated by her decision to marry Bertrand, but he respected it. He respected _Beatrice_ , full stop. So he kept an eye out for her, and kept running from the authorities, and occasionally sent us word that he was still alive. But since she died there's been nothing."

"If he loved the children's mother as much as you say he did, he might just be grieving," Olivia says. "Perhaps he just needs time?"

"Perhaps he's dead," says Kit, quietly, "either way, he doesn't write."

Jacques doesn't flinch, exactly, at her words, but his shoulder under Olivia's hand tenses and relaxes, tenses and relaxes. She tightens her grip. _I'm here._

"I've heard the Snickets are good at cheating death, and that Lemony in particular is exceptional at it," she says, lifting her chin, "I'm sure he's out there, somewhere."

Kit only gives a tight, close-mouthed smile, and sips at her tea again. Jacques reaches up and lays a hand over hers on his shoulder. The silence stretches taut like a wire, heavy with grave, unspoken things. Olivia is abruptly reminded that beyond this sanctuary they've carved out for themselves in this house, fires are still being set, and firefighters are still risking their lives to put them out. It makes her all the more grateful that they had been able to pull the children to safety before they too were devoured.

"Olivia?" Isadora's voice at the door behind her makes her turn, sharply. All three Quagmires are standing there, red-faced and puffy-eyed but smiling, while Scylla noses at their hands in comfort. Duncan has an arm slung around his brother, who appears vaguely sheepish for some reason.

"Is everything alright, children?" Olivia asks, as something shifts into place behind her heart.

"Can Quigley have something to eat? His stomach's growling but he won't say anything about it," Isadora replies with a pointed look at the boy in question, who gives an embarrassed smile and ducks his head.

Olivia is moving to find the ingredients to make sandwiches before Isadora even finishes speaking. "Of course, dear," she says, "you only ever have to ask. Or not, really. Feel free to get things from in here whenever you're hungry - just make sure you let me know when we're low on something so I know to put it on the grocery list."

"Thank you, ma'am," says Quigley.

"I know Isadora and Duncan don't have any food allergies, but do you?"

"No, ma'am."

"Turkey okay?"

"Whatever you have is fine."

Olivia can feel the eyes of both Snicket siblings on her, but doesn't look their way. They're having some kind of wordless conversation, she can tell, and has no wish to pry or interrupt. If Jacques would like her to know what they're not saying, he'll tell her, but until then, she's got a hungry child to feed.

She makes a note while she prepares the food to adjust her shopping lists - they'll have to go into town tomorrow for things for Quigley's room, and clothes that don't hang off his frame, and he'll no doubt want to pick out his own books for the library. Isadora had mentioned his interest in cartography, so she begins mentally clearing space in the library for atlases and books on mapmaking and geography.

"I should probably head out," Kit says several minutes later, after Olivia has placed a plate of sandwiches in front of Quigley at the adjoining breakfast nook and returned to finish off her tea. "I have quite a drive tomorrow."

"You're sure you don't want to stay?" Jacques asks as he casually rinses out the empty teacups. He's not looking at his sister when he asks.

"You know I can't."

Jacques sighs. "I do know."

Kit gives another tight smile, before easing herself off the barstool and to her feet with some degree of difficulty. She looks as though she might like to say something else, but she's cut off by a voice from behind her.

"You're leaving?" Quigley's voice is steady, but small.

"I have to get back," says Kit, flashing him a gentle smile that makes her look so stunningly like her brother Olivia wonders how she ever could have missed the fact that they were twins.

"Right," Quigley says, and his eyes flick over her shoulder to meet Olivia's before jerking away. It comes to her like a lightning flash - unlike his siblings and the Baudelaires, Quigley really has no idea who she and Jacques are. He hasn't been passed from guardian to guardian, and he hasn't had the reassurance that _anyone_ would care for him since he'd left his home, alone and likely quite scared, the night his parents died. She'd at least been _acquainted_ with each of the other children before offering to care for them, but Quigley is only here by circumstance, not choice, and his trust is going to have to be built from scratch.

It will need to be addressed, she thinks with a tired sigh, but she hasn't the faintest idea how to go about doing it.

"Thank you for helping me, Ms. Snicket," Quigley says suddenly, drawing her from her thoughts, and she might be imagining the way his voice catches. He is so, so young and so, so tired, and he's been running for such a long time. Olivia aches to embrace him the way she would the others, and laments the fact that she can't.

"You'll be safe now, Quigley. There's no one on earth I trust more than Jacques. He'll take good care of you and your brother and sister," says Kit. Her last sentence is delivered with a weighted look at Jacques, who nods at her in return.

Quigley also nods, slowly, and goes back to his sandwiches and his siblings with a hesitant smile.

Olivia makes sure to return it before following the Snickets out of the room and through the parlor. The Baudelaires are now essentially piled on top of one another, Violet with her back to the couch cushions and Klaus facing her and nearly dangling off the sofa, with Sunny cradled between them. Charybdis lies on the rug to the side, curled up and carefully watching Kit move through the room. She sits fully upright as they all quietly pass by the sleeping children, and only lays back down once they've fully moved into the front hallway.

"It's been _ages_ since I've seen a Vigilant Fire Dog," Kit says, almost wistfully. "It reminds me of our training days. I'll have to talk Dewey into requisitioning one once the baby arrives."

She halts then, and seems to hesitate a moment. Without warning, she reaches up and pulls Jacques in for a hug as best she can around her protruding belly. She releases him an instant later before he can reciprocate.

"Take care of yourself, Jacques," she says, already turning away, "and the children too."

"Of course," he says, watching her go with a carefully blank expression that somehow still manages to break Olivia's heart.

Kit looks to her, and offers her hand with a wry smile. Olivia accepts it. "It was good to officially meet you. Look after my brother, will you? He's a bit hopeless."

"We'll look after each other," is all Olivia can think to say, and Kit's smile only grows as she makes for the front door. Jacques and Olivia follow her out and watch as she descends the steps to her own taxi.

She moves as though to get in it, only to halt again and turn back. She drags her eyes over the house and the entryway and the grounds, taking in everything for a long, silent moment. Olivia wonders what she's looking for, what she sees, especially when Kit's gaze finally comes to rest on herself.

She finally gives a soft, sad smile, and turns to look at her brother one last time. "I really do love what you've done with the place, Jacques. I have no doubt you'll be very happy here."

And then she's gone, ducking into her taxi, and drives off into the waiting dark.

 **A/N: Hope you enjoyed!  
Also! This is actually gonna be four chapters, because I couldn't get everything condensed and I didn't want to rush anything. So the next chapter will be the last one, for realsies this time. **

**As ever, I don't own anything but the dogs, everything else belongs to Daniel Handler and the rest.**

 **Special thanks to lady-stormbraver for all her incredibly helpful feedback during her finals week! Everything about this that doesn't completely suck? That's all her.**

 **Special thanks also to everyone who favorited or reviewed! You guys keep me going!**

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 **Sincerely,**

 **Starcrier.**


	4. The Found Family

Chapter IV

The Found Family

The dog park, Olivia thinks, has really done nothing to deserve the wary looks it's getting from the six children at her side. It's open and spacious and clean, populated with a light smattering of people and dogs, nowhere close to crowded. The day is bright and clear and warm, and there's a pleasant crossbreeze stirring the leaves of the blooming cherry blossom trees that line the fence around the park.

The whole scene is almost painfully idyllic, which is likely going to make Jacques suspicious - _ah yes_. As soon as the thought crosses her mind, her partner raises his spyglass to his eye, surveying the area and the people in it for any kind of sinister activity.

She imagines she'd find it all almost humorous if the children's discomfort - and fear, though they aren't admitting it, dear things - hadn't been so very real. If the _threat_ hadn't been so very real, thanks to Olaf and his continued elusiveness. Klaus had informed her that this is the longest period of time that he's been out of their lives since he'd first entered them, and Olivia wants to take that as a good sign but knows it likely isn't.

Jacques serves as a formidable deterrent, she knows, as do the attentions of the entire organization on the manor, but she's had the misfortune to have encountered Olaf enough times to know that he is unlikely to have given up. He's biding his time, and given what he'd been able to get away with while essentially improvising most of his past cons, she shudders to think what he could attempt given actual time to plan.

She says none of this out loud, and forces a smile instead, hoisting the stack of picnic blankets higher up in her arms. "See any good spots?"

"We could set up over there," Violet says after a moment of surveying the area, gesturing to a particularly remote and shady spot in the corner of the park. She's not sullen, exactly, because Violet is _never_ sullen, but today she's tense and quiet and watchful, scanning the park around them with a wariness that breaks Olivia's heart.

 _But_ , she reminds herself with a steadying breath, _that's why we're here_.

Recovery, Olivia knows, both from the mountain of books on the subject stacked by her bed and her own personal experience, is not linear. She knows it's normal for the children to have progressed in some areas and remained static in others - especially given the variance in each of their traumas - with steps taken forwards and backwards on any given day. All of this is normal, and all of this is _okay_.

But today is one of Olivia's gentle nudging days, where she's cashing in on the trust these children have placed in her to just get them outside the house that they have, by some unspoken unanimous decision, chosen not to leave ever since Quigley arrived two weeks ago.

At first, it had been so subtle that Olivia had had hardly noticed it, their continued refusal to venture beyond the gates of the manor - they'd stopped leaving even for walks or shopping trips. She'd eventually caught on when _Klaus_ had started turning down venturing out to the bookstore, where the shopkeeper knows him by name and keeps new inventory set aside just for him.

This behavior isn't wholly unexpected, given the kind of trauma the Baudelaires and Quagmires have lived through, and again, it's _okay_ , but it's… it's a little worrying, is all. It's as though now that Quigley is finally safe, their metaphorical drawbridges can go up, as though they don't want to chance their newfound happiness being destroyed by anything outside of the sanctuary they've claimed for themselves. They seem to expect that the second they step foot outside the manor, everything will come crumbling down.

Hence the picnic. They'd suggested having it on Briny Beach at first, as Olivia had a vague memory of Klaus mentioning they'd been fond of the place, once, only to abandon that plan in the space of a heartbeat when she'd seen how quickly the Baudelaires had gone pale. Then the _other_ memory she'd had surfaced, the one where Violet had mentioned that Briny Beach had been where they'd first received the news of their parent's deaths.

Fortunately, Jacques had come to the same realization, and, as was typical, had a back-up plan. He'd instantly suggested the dog park as an alternative, citing the need for Scylla and Charybdis to get some exercise anyway, what with the amount of spoiling they got in the form of table scraps, at which point the children had all smiled sheepishly and the misstep had been forgotten.

"Good eye, Violet," says Jacques, drawing her back to the present. His spyglass is stowed away in his pockets once more, and a light, relaxed expression has overtaken his features. Olivia wonders how much of it is real, and how much of it is affected for the children's benefit.

The ten of them - six children, two adults, and two dogs - move to the place Violet had indicated, and begin laying out the blankets and food. There's roast chicken for lunch, and warm rolls and egg salad and blueberry pie and tea in a huge thermos, and Olivia is relieved to note that the unfamiliar terrain hasn't appeared to affect any appetites. She'd _just_ started getting each of them to eat regularly, and to take decent portions when they do - since Quigley's arrival, Isadora and Duncan are finally, _finally_ regaining the weight they'd lost during their time in Olaf's clutches, and she would have hated for this to be any kind of setback.

After a while, Olivia watches the children start to unwind, to settle, chattering quietly amongst themselves while they eat. Isadora and Klaus lean against each other, shoulders brushing as they look over something in Duncan's commonplace book while Quigley alternates between their conversation and talking to Violet, who quietly tinkers with something that looks like a bewildering cross between a watch and a magnifying glass. Occasionally it sparks or lets off smoke, and each time the dogs jerk to look at her and flick their ears forward, scenting the air in wariness until Jacques throws their frisbee again. Sunny looks on from Klaus' lap, occasionally offering commentary in the form of baby-babble between bites of pie.

Despite the slight tension lingering in the air, Olivia is _happy_ , the feeling bubbling in her chest like champagne, threatening to burst. She's careful with it, because the children aren't there yet, and she doesn't think Jacques quite is either, but for the first time in ages she isn't _alone_. It's enough to make her tip her head back in bliss, letting the sunlight warm her face and the wind ruffle her hair as her children chatter and her partner murmurs praise to their dogs.

She closes her eyes for just a moment and breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

When she opens them again, Jacques is looking at her with an expression of such open affection she feels she might melt.

"You're beautiful," he says.

"Thank you," she manages, barely.

He looks as though he might like to say something else, darts a hand toward his pocket almost as an afterthought, but he's interrupted by Isadora's voice rising sharply.

"Duncan, that's preposterous. You can't rhyme 'romance' with 'underpants'. That's not even a _half_ -rhyme, and anyway, it's tasteless."

"I think it works," Quigley says mildly, though there's a twitch at the corner of his mouth that suggests he might be stirring things up intentionally.

"Don't _you_ start," says Isadora.

"What about 'carte blanche'?" Klaus cuts in, his plate of egg salad suddenly _very_ interesting as he fights back a smile of his own. The horribly mangled French phrase, which Olivia knows for a _fact_ Klaus knows how to pronounce correctly, makes Jacques cringe and Isadora look at him with an expression of profound betrayal. Olivia laughs before she can stop herself.

" _Honestly_ ," Isadora says with an aggrieved roll of her eyes, "these are worse than the rhymes Carmelita Spats came up with."

Klaus snorts, losing the battle against his grin, and Quigley tilts his head, oblivious.

"Who's Carmelita Spats?"

Isadora's eyes light up, although not with fondness. "A girl we used to go to school with."

"She was a real -" Duncan starts, only to be cut off by his sister, whose grin only grows the longer he talks.

"Don't, don't say it -"

"She was just a -"

" _Stop_ -" She's openly giggling now.

" _Cakesniffer_."

Violet, who has been largely on the sidelines of this conversation, spews tea _everywhere_ as she bursts into laughter alongside the others. Startled, Olivia shifts forward to help her, but Jacques beats her to it, extending a napkin with a wry smile. The dogs, who had wandered back to the picnic once Jacques stopped throwing their frisbee, each begin to lick her face, either as a show of concern or just because they like the taste of tea, Olivia isn't sure. Violet tries to push them away with half-hearted protests and limited success, her whole body shaking with the force of her giggling.

Even Quigley joins in, amused at the others' enjoyment even if he has no practical knowledge of what they're talking about. Olivia waits until the children's laughter has subsided some before she explains, not wanting him to feel left out.

"Carmelita Spats was a monstrous little girl at Prufrock Preparatory School who threw around the title of 'cakesniffer' perhaps a little too liberally," she says, shaking her head at the memory.

"What does that even mean?" Quigley asks.

"I'm not sure. I think she made it up."

"I think she drew from personal experience," says Isadora, which sets them all to giggling again.

Bewildered herself now, Olivia looks to Jacques, who has an oddly knowing twinkle in his eye.

"She was a strange girl with strange habits," is all he says, and doesn't elaborate. Olivia thinks of the dead bird Carmelita had brought into her library and shudders, privately agreeing.

She knows she probably shouldn't - and wouldn't, typically - encourage them to make fun of _anyone_ , but she's never heard any of them laugh this way before, all at once and without restraint, and they've all been so quiet lately, so afraid of happiness for fear it would be snatched away from them. And anyway Carmelita really _had_ been horrible, by far the worst of the students Olivia had ever encountered at the equally horrible school - it's a pleasant surprise to discover that Jacques knows about the girl and agrees.

He'd told her some of what had gone on in the background of the Baudelaire children's terrible time at Prufrock, how Olaf had locked poor Larry the waiter in the freezer and Jacques had been sent to rescue him - but mostly he told her about how he hadn't made it back in time to help the Baudelaires or the Quagmires, guilt like a physical weight pressing his shoulders down. At which point, of course, she'd told him that she'd been there the whole time and had done nothing to stop Olaf's schemes or better shield the children, even though she'd _known_ he wasn't all he claimed to be, so if he was to blame for what happened then so was she - and, predictably, that had shut him up.

She's getting better at that sort of thing, and soon she hopes to be so good at it that she can cut off his self-deprecation and guilt before it even starts - and maybe, in the distant future, keep him from feeling it at all.

Gradually, the laughter subsides, leaving something like contentment in its wake, and for a while things are quiet again. Olivia watches them all, taking each of them in in a way that's become quietly habitual over the weeks, but it's Quigley she stops to examine the longest.

The boy is an enigma, though perhaps less so than he had been originally. He's just as kind as Isadora and Duncan, although slightly more wry, and their praise of him had not been misplaced - he's wickedly clever, sharp as a tack with a remarkable sense of direction. It doesn't surprise her at all, now that she knows him, that he'd made it as far as the Mortmain Mountains on his own, or that he'd uncovered as many secrets as he had without help from anyone else.

He's quite independent, more so than any of the others, and keeps both Jacques and herself at a polite but noticeable distance. It helps him, she thinks, to see his sibling's trust in them, but she respects his wariness and his pain and in turn showers him with as much careful affection as she feels he's comfortable with. It's more than she'd hoped for, but still less than she'd like.

His own grief is different than the others, in that he'd mercifully been spared any and all forms of abuse at the hands of Count Olaf, but he'd still lost his parents and his home and, for a great while, his siblings. His trauma manifests in an almost desperate kind of attachment to them that borders on clinginess - he is never found in a room without Duncan or Isadora present. Jacques had recently discovered that all three of the Quagmires had been cramming into Isadora's bed at night to sleep, unwilling to scatter into separate bedrooms, and so had taken it upon himself to move the boy's mattresses into her room until they were comfortable sleeping alone again.

The Baudelaires had gone through a similar phase, at the beginning, so Olivia isn't concerned - in fact, she finds it rather sweet. She knows how abandonment can sting, how loneliness can creep into a person's bones and _ache_.

She'd have given anything, once, to have not been alone in the dark.

Her maudlin thoughts are interrupted by Jacques leaning back, grunting slightly as he lowers himself to rest his head on her lap. Something kicks in her chest and she smiles, smooths a suitably roguish lock of dark hair off his forehead, tries to put everything she feels for him into the gesture. _I love, I love, I love -_

His eyes slip closed under her ministrations, some of his ever-present tension melting away. He's been working himself to the point of exhaustion these last few weeks, throwing the same energy he'd once devoted to finding Quigley now to finding Olaf, and that _does_ concern her. For all that he looks relaxed right now, she knows he could snap into action on a dime if something were to go wrong - which it _won't_ , she thinks firmly, silently daring Olaf to show his face today of all days.

She's getting a sense of why Jacques always looks so tired, behind that dashing, brave veneer of his - the old Greek myth about Atlas springs immediately to mind before she can quell it.

"Olivia?" _Speaking of people who carry too much_.

She turns her gaze to Klaus, who is holding a book nearly the size of his head in front of him, poised to open and perhaps hide behind. _War and Peace_ , says the cover, and Olivia smiles, fondness warming her from the inside out.

A memory surfaces, threading the fondness through with something deeper, fuller. About two weeks ago, shortly after Quigley had arrived, Jacques had been caught up in a briefing with Jacquelyn and hadn't come home until late, and Olivia had been waiting up for him in the sitting room. She had been curled contentedly by the fire, engrossed in her well-worn copy of _Jane Eyre,_ when a sharp crash had echoed from the kitchen.

Instantly on alert, she'd scrambled to her feet to investigate, only to discover the middle Baudelaire bent over next to the sink, Charybdis whining at his side. There was a pool of water and shattered glass by his feet, and he'd trembled like he was going to come out of his skin.

"Klaus," Olivia had murmured, trying to avoid startling him. It hadn't worked - the boy jerked like she'd struck him, whirling around and barely managing to avoid the glass with his bare toes.

"Olivia," he'd said, red-rimmed eyes blinking owlishly behind his glasses. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - I'll clean it up."

She'd frowned, instantly concerned by how miserable he looked. "It was an accident, there's no need to apologize," she'd said as she'd edged closer, catching sight of the clock on the wall. He should have been long asleep by now - and judging by his rumpled pajamas, perhaps he had been.

 _Poor put-upon boy,_ she'd thought, _what woke you?_

"Move away from the glass," she'd murmured, "you'll hurt yourself."

He'd done so, and she'd gone for a broom to sweep up the pieces, grateful for her comfortable-but-sturdy houseshoes. Klaus, either because he'd felt badly about the mess or because he'd needed something to do with his hands, had retrieved a hand towel and crouched down beside her to sop up the water, but the trembling in his body never stopped.

Olivia had been unable to bear his strange silence. Something had driven him from the safety of his bed, had made him cry and shake, and not for the first time she'd breathed a silent prayer for forgiveness to his sainted parents for her own inadequacy.

"Klaus," she'd murmured once the glass was disposed of, setting the broom aside and reaching towards him as slowly as she dared, half-fearing he'd spook, "what can I do? How can I help you?"

He'd heaved in a deep, shuddering breath as two huge tears had slipped down either side of his face, dripping onto the towel he was still dragging back and forth almost desperately across the tile. The water had long dried by then, but he hadn't seemed to notice.

"It's nothing," he'd whispered even as his face contorted with some deep, unnameable grief, and then dropped his head to burst into quiet sobs.

"Oh, _sweetheart_ ," she'd breathed, feeling tears well up in her own eyes in response. She'd shifted closer, and gently, gently reached up to place a hand on the back of his neck in comfort. To her surprise, he'd moved with the motion, leaning forward until his head was pressed against her shoulder, until the the sobs that wracked his frame shook hers too.

"It's alright," she'd said, unable to manage anything else as she'd carded a hand through his dark, sleep-mussed hair, "it's alright, sweetheart."

She has no idea how long they sat like that, huddled together on the damp tile while he'd cried his poor broken heart out and she simply held him, occasionally offering quiet murmurs of comfort. Gradually, mercifully, he'd exhausted himself and fallen asleep on Olivia's shoulder. Somewhat relieved, she'd carefully removed his glasses and leaned back against the cabinets, stroking his back until she nodded off herself.

Jacques had found them like that, much later, and hadn't said a word - hadn't needed to - as he'd gently hoisted the boy into his arms and carried him back up the stairs to his bedroom, and that had been the end of it. Klaus had never brought the incident up again and neither had she, and to this day she doesn't know what horrors woke him, or which ones wake him now, but he's seemed freer in the daylight for it ever since, so she doesn't press. If he wants to talk about it, he knows he can come to her, but that's a choice he has to make on his own.

"Olivia?" Klaus asks again, snapping her from her reverie. She shakes her head to clear it.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"It's nothing, I just… I wanted to ask you about something that happened while we were at Prufrock."

Olivia sits up straighter. "Of course, Klaus."

He exchanges a look with Isadora, then busies himself adjusting the bow on Sunny's single curl. "At the pep rally, when Olaf had all the orphans stand, you stood too."

 _Ah_ , Oliva thinks, and runs her fingers through Jacques' hair again. His eyes are still closed, but she can tell he's listening.

"That's not a question," she says gently. The children exchange significant glances with one another, each trying to encourage someone else to talk.

"Do you have any family?" Violet finally asks. There's an element to this line of questioning Olivia doesn't know how to read - she's not sure why it feels so important, why there's a heaviness to all of it.

Still, only the truth will suffice, and certainly Olivia has no intention of _lying_ , but - this just isn't a subject she's fond of dwelling on, that's all. But if the children can be brave then so can she.

She steadies herself with a single breath. "I have a sister, somewhere - she's quite a bit older than I am. We don't talk much. Or ever, really."

"What's her name?" asks Duncan.

"Miranda," Olivia says, quieter than she means to, and has to repeat herself, "her name is Miranda. I haven't seen her in… well. A very long time."

"Why not?" Quigley asks, and he's polite but there's a hint of a _test_ in his words, like he's measuring her.

And that's the question, isn't it? Olivia gives a smile she hopes looks steadier than she feels. "She got married and moved away with her husband to a remote island somewhere. I never quite had enough money to travel to see her," she explains, "and she never felt the need to come visit me."

"I'm sorry," Isadora says, "that must be horrible."

It is and it isn't, and both reasons are… well, not complicated, but difficult just the same. "My parents died in a car accident when I was very young," she explains carefully. "Miranda was already living on her own by then, and when they passed it fell to her to care for me. She… wasn't thrilled with the responsibility."

"But you were her sister," says Violet, skewering her with another of those looks that Olivia recognizes but can't place, a look that makes the back of her neck itch with familiarity, "that's what family is _for_."

And of course that _would_ be bewildering to someone as endlessly devoted and selfless as Violet, who, had there been no last-second alternative, would have married that disgusting villain Olaf at fourteen to spare her baby sister's life. And while Miranda had never been expressly _unkind_ , Olivia isn't certain that she would have done the same for her had they been placed in a similar position.

"Family is a funny thing," is all she says, absently smoothing out the creases that have gathered in Jacques' brow. "Some people interpret the definition more loosely than others."

There's a heavy beat of silence. Quigley in particular is studying her carefully, the expression on his face steady and unreadable.

Olivia plows on. "She'd always been an independent sort of person, and I suppose she felt I was dead weight. In any case, the arrangement didn't last long - she enrolled me in Prufrock at the start of the next school term."

At this, Jacques' eyes snap open. "I didn't realize you had _attended_ Prufrock," he says, "I would have remembered seeing you." He delivers the last part with a flirtatious wink. She makes a face at him, ignoring the way her cheeks flame, and he laughs.

"I would have been several grades behind you, and I had a tendency to fade into the background anyway. I went largely unnoticed for most of my time there."

"You must have been lonely," says Duncan, insightful as ever.

"I was," she says, and oh, she _was_ , "but I suppose some of that was my own fault - I wasn't placed in the Orphan's Shack, you see, because Miranda was my legal guardian and had signed off for me to stay in the dorms, but… I was grieving my parents, and I was the only one in the world who seemed to care that they were gone. The other children didn't understand why I was so quiet for so long… they seemed to think I was stuck up." The memory burns like bile in the back of her throat.

When she looks back down at Jacques to gather herself, she finds him watching her with a soft, sad expression on his face. _I understand_ , she hears, as clearly as though he'd spoken aloud, _I understand, and I'm sorry._

She offers him a shaky smile and looks up to the children again. "So, like many lonely, lost children," she says, "I made myself a sanctuary in the safest, quietest place I could find."

"The library," says Klaus, instantly.

She nods. "The library, yes. I spent more time there than the actual librarian did, I think, learning the inventory, spending hours pouring over any book I could get my hands on, hiding away from the world and its troubles. When I graduated, they asked me to stay on and help out part-time, and eventually the old librarian retired and I took over completely. It wasn't until Vice Principal Nero came along that the library's operating hours started being scaled back little by little until it was only open ten minutes a day."

The reality of her life, when faced head-on like that is… rather bleak, actually. How long might she have stayed there, if the Quagmires hadn't been snatched from under her very nose, if the pain and loneliness in the Baudelaire's eyes as they searched endlessly for answers hadn't called to her? Would she have _ever_ left? Would she still be there, wandering the dusty, crumbling shelves and waiting for the brief minutes the library was open each day? Working for an _idiot_?

The answer frightens her, the resounding _yes_ ringing hollowly to her core, and she forces herself away from it and back to the children in front of her.

"Is that why you left to be a volunteer instead?" Quigley asks, again with that curiously measuring expression on his face. "Because of the hours?"

Olivia blinks at him, stunned. Do they… do they really not understand? Another glance down at Jacques proves unhelpful - he only looks up at her with a faint smile that could mean anything.

"No," she says carefully, "I left because Isadora and Duncan had been abducted from my library and I wanted to make sure all the necessary steps were being taken to recover them, and because I saw the Baudelaires on the cover of _The Daily Punctilio_ with suspicious-looking new guardians, and no one seemed concerned about it, least of all Mr. Poe."

There's a long beat of silence that Olivia doesn't know how to interpret. Isadora and Duncan aim significant looks at Quigley, who is looking at her like _she's_ the unreadable one, and the Baudelaires each wear matching expressions of… something. Shock, maybe.

"I just wanted you all to be safe," Olivia says, softer, faintly embarrassed without knowing precisely why. But they're all just _looking_ at her, like she doesn't make any sense, and it can't be that surprising, surely?

Without a word, Isadora leans over, casually-as-you-please, and hugs her so tightly Olivia feels tears spring to her eyes.

"We _are_ safe," says Quigley, successfully flooring her, "thanks to you and Jacques."

"Jacques handled most of it," Olivia says, unsure of how else to respond, and that, of all things, is what finally makes her partner rejoin the conversation.

" _That_ is not true," he says, "we did it together."

She frowns down at him. "I would have gone back to Prufrock in defeat without your help."

He frowns right back at her. "We never would have made it out of that jail in the village without yours."

"You saved me from the lions at the carnival."

"You saved the _Baudelaires_ from the lions at the carnival."

"Well, you -"

Their argument is suddenly curtailed by a rather indiscreet cough from one of the triplets, and when Olivia looks back up at them, all six children are wearing identical grins.

"You should _both_ probably just take the credit, otherwise we might be here all day," says Duncan.

 _Dear boy,_ she thinks, and makes a playful face at him. "And _you_ allshould probably go play with the dogs before they get bored and start chewing your shoes for lack of something to do."

"As if Scylla and Charybdis would ever chew _shoes_ ," says Isadora, scandalized by the very idea even as she gets up and takes the frisbee from Jacques. After a few moments her brothers follow after her, each taking turns tossing the toy as the dogs race each other to snatch it out of the air.

By some unspoken agreement, the Baudelaires remain seated, as though to give the triplets space - apparently not without reason, as Isadora and Duncan are murmuring lowly and intently to Quigley while they walk. He has a drawn, thoughtful expression on his face as he listens.

Olivia thinks about the weighted looks Quigley had given her during their conversation and suddenly starts to suspect what the point of it all might have been. If it is what she thinks it is, if he's trying to figure out why he can trust her, trust _them_ , then she's not sorry at all to have dredged up her old hurts, especially if it can help heal his.

Klaus stares after Isadora for a long moment, watchful and pensive, before almost reluctantly dragging his gaze away to _War and Peace_. Within moments, his focus is lost to its pages. Violet finally sets whatever she'd been tinkering with aside and leans over to hoist Sunny into her own lap, and the pair of them lean back into the shade, close and quiet.

Olivia shifts slightly so she can better keep the Quagmires in her sightline, careful not to dislodge Jacques, and presses back on her arms. A strange, foreign feeling steals over her, deeper than contentment or happiness, more steady, but she doesn't waste energy trying to parse it out.

Family is a funny thing, she'd told them, and it's true - the definition is far more fluid than most people ever give it credit for.

To some people, family is random, it's obligatory, it's a given - and that's _all_ it is. To others, like the children in her care, family is a lodestone, a true north, the center point around which their whole lives are ordered. To someone like the kind, noble man currently dozing off in her lap, family is something precious and sacred, something to shelter and protect and guard at any cost, no matter how much time or distance may separate the people in it.

If she'd been asked, before any of this started, what family was, what it meant, she would have simply quoted the dictionary: _a family is any group of persons closely related by blood_. Family, to her, was always a cold, remote sort of concept, something she'd had once, maybe, but didn't anymore and likely never would again, and she'd told herself she was fine with it.

But things are different now.

Now, she'd say that family, sometimes, is something you have to go out and make for yourself.

There's a long road ahead of them still, but there's a long one at their backs too, and the progress they've all made, the strength and determination she's surrounded by - it settles something deep within her, in that gaping, questioning, seethingly _empty_ place that had hurt so deeply for so long.

Olivia lifts her face to the light again, the line of a much-beloved Austen novel springing, unbidden, to mind.

 _Is there any felicity in the world_ , she thinks, with a soft, contented smile, _superior to this?_

* * *

That hazy, lazy peace lasts about a week before something upends it, as something often does.

It's a dreary Saturday morning, and the weatherman had predicted rain, but it looks like it's about to _storm_ , the sky above swirling dark and the wind rattling the window panes. Olivia is halfway through preparing lunch when she realizes, _wait, the laundry_ , and flies out the back door with a basket on her hip to grab the frankly ridiculous amounts of clothing drying on the lines before the sky opens up.

She nearly stumbles over Violet, of all people, who is perched next to Charybdis on the edge of the deck, tinkering with another one of her projects. Her hair is tied up, but the wind has still managed to tangle it into visible knots that will no doubt be awful to try to brush out later. She has a streak of oil on her forehead, another on her cheekbone, and her fingertips are coated black.

"Violet, what on earth are you doing out here? It's about to storm, you should be inside."

The girl blinks, like she'd been mentally very far away, then offers up a sheepish smile, gesturing with… whatever it is that's in her hands. It's not what she'd been working on during the picnic - Olivia has noticed her tendency to work on multiple projects at once, picking them up and setting them aside in a way that seems random but she knows likely isn't. Violet is an extremely neat, ordered person, and everything she does has a purpose, obvious or not. It's a rare trait in someone so young, but one that Jacques had said she'd shared with her mother. The idea makes her smile.

"I didn't want to set off the sprinkler system if this started sparking. I hadn't even noticed the weather had turned," Violet explains.

"You'd have noticed when it started raining, no doubt," Olivia says, "but since you're out here, would you mind helping me grab the laundry off the line?" Then, taking note of the state of Violet's hands, she amends, "But maybe clean up first."

"Of course," Violet says, as eager to help as always. She picks up the remains of her work and carries it inside, and when she returns, she's drying her now-clean hands on a rag tucked into the belt of her trousers. Olivia hands her the basket, and they hurry for the three clotheslines on the far end of the yard.

Above them, the sky is whipping into a frenzy - the first rumbles of thunder sound in the distance as she piles semi-damp laundry into Violet's basket.

"We're going to get soaked," the girl predicts, eyeing the clouds.

"We might not if my lovely assistant would stop dragging her feet," says Olivia, tugging on the basket and earning herself a teasing grin in return.

"I thought Jacques was your lovely assistant."

Olivia laughs, shakes her head. "Not when it comes to laundry, he's not," she says, thinking sadly of her former favorite blouse, now forever stained pink, "and anyway he's busy in the garage giving the taxi a tune-up, which is where I thought _you_ were."

"I was going to offer to help him, but I lost track of time," she says, "I'll see if he needs me when we go back in."

Just then, a particularly strong gust of wind screams through, striking the clothesline with such force that one of Jacques' shirts is yanked from its pins and goes flying through the air before Olivia can snatch it, landing somewhere off behind the greenhouse several yards away.

"I'll get it!" Violet says, dropping the basket and tearing off in that direction, Charybdis on her heels. Hopefully she makes it to the shirt before the dog does - Scylla and Charybdis are well-trained, but some instincts are too powerful to ignore, and Olivia isn't sure she'd be able to set Jacques' shirt to rights again should Charybdis decide she wants to pay tug-of-war.

Olivia turns back to the clothesline, yanking laundry off with haste now - the thunder sounds closer, and that wind really is monstrous; her own hair will be in knots before long. The clouds in the distance are dancing with lightning, flashing rapid-fire in a dizzying pattern.

"Olivia!"

The urgency in Violet's voice, combined with Charybdis' sudden snarl, has her whirling back around. She can't see either one of them for the greenhouse in the way, and terror slams into her like a physical blow. In an instant she's running in their direction, panic lending her feet wings.

 _Stupid, stupid Olivia, you should have been prepared for this, it's Olaf, I should have kept my spyglass on me, stupid,_ stupid _Olivia!_ She rounds the corner of the greenhouse, heart racing, braced to do whatever is necessary to get Violet clear of danger - only to stop dead at the sight that meets her eyes.

There _is_ a man standing there, but it's not Olaf. He is very tall, wearing a worn suit and a somewhat startled expression, one hand stretched out towards Violet as if in placation. The girl herself is watching him carefully, clutching Jacques' shirt to her like a lifeline, and is angled away from his hand like she's afraid it might move to snatch her at any moment. At her side, Charybdis is poised to spring, tense and watchful, but makes no move to attack - in fact, the dog almost seems bewildered, her head tilted at a curious angle.

Olivia steps forward to put herself between them, studying the newcomer. She discovers, with the suddenness of a slap, that she recognizes his eyes, not by their color or their shape, although those too are familiar, but by the sadness reflected within them, dark and deep and lonely as a well or an open grave or Lake Lachrymose in the off-season. Jacques had the same eyes, once, and Kit still does; that same sadness is part of them, buried and carried so deeply they don't seem to realize it's there anymore.

"You must be Lemony," is all Olivia says. It's all she can manage around the still-receding terror in her throat.

If her recognition surprises him, he doesn't show it. "Unfortunately," he replies. He has a wry, deadpan sort of voice, flatly resigned.

"Your name is _Lemony?_ " Violet asks from behind her, and Olivia turns to see her watching him with a cautious, measuring look. That familiarity raises its head again, stronger now than it's ever been - Olivia _knows_ that expression, the set of her jaw, the tilt of her head, knows she's seen it before, somewhere else.

Above them, a peal of thunder breaks out, and lightning flashes worryingly close. The man only nods in reply to her question, regarding the younger girl as though she's brandishing a Mamba du Mal rather than a white dress shirt with a button missing at the collar.

She studies him for a long, silent moment. "You knew my parents," Violet finally says. It's not a question.

Olivia blinks in surprise, and then does it again when Lemony nods a second time. "I did."

"My mother told me once that I would have been named Lemony, if I'd been a boy."

The first tentative raindrops kiss Olivia's nose, forehead, cheeks. Nobody moves, but Lemony looks stricken, pained like he'd just taken a harpoon to the chest, and Olivia thinks, _Oh_.

 _Lemony was, and in all likelihood still is, desperately in love with Beatrice Baudelaire,_ Kit had said, and that would explain it but it wouldn't explain all of it, wouldn't explain why Olivia recognizes the way Violet looks when she's determined, when she's mentally taking something apart, when she's being brave.

 _She loved him back_ , Kit had also said, and it connects, what Violet reminds her of, _who_ she reminds her of.

Violet looks like _Jacques_ , because Jacques looks stunningly like his _brother_.

 _Stars_ , she thinks, almost knocked off her feet by the revelation, _Violet is a Snicket_.

Somehow, she manages to find her voice. "Violet," she says, "please go let Jacques know we have a guest and to meet us in his study. And tell him to come _quickly_."

Her eyes widen, looking between Olivia and Lemony and back again, rapidly. "But -"

"Violet," Olivia says, gently but firmly, "please hurry."

The girl frowns, gives a last watchful, nearly warning look at Lemony, before racing off back towards the house, Charybdis in tow. Lemony doesn't draw his gaze from her until the moment she disappears through the door.

It's started to rain in earnest now, and Olivia thinks forlornly of her laundry. "You'd better come inside," she says, gesturing for him to follow her. After a moment, she adds, "I'm Olivia Caliban. Jacques recently recruited me - we're looking after the Baudelaires and the Quagmires together."

A flash, a flicker of something that might have been a smile. "I know who you are, Miss Caliban." At her startled look, Lemony explains, "I make it a point to research anyone who comes into close contact with my siblings," he says, then adds, "Or the Baudelaires."

 _I'll bet you do,_ Olivia thinks, but doesn't say. She wonders if Jacques knows about Violet, and if she should be upset if he does - keeping his secrets about his own family is one thing, but this is somewhat different.

Which, okay, it's also assuming she's even _right_ , and there's no hard evidence beyond what her instincts are telling her, _screaming_ at her, but they've yet to be wrong about anything else so far so she feels secure in her suspicion that Violet is almost definitely Jacques' biological niece.

Stars, and things around here had just started to settle down, too.

She leads him into the house through the back door just in time for the bottom to drop out of the sky, rain pouring down in torrents. A violent crack of thunder shakes the house with its nearness, and the lights around them flicker as if in warning.

"This way," she says, guiding him through the kitchen and the sitting room, before crossing the hall to Jacques' study. She thinks she catches a glimpse of one of the children at the top of the stairwell, hears quiet murmurs, but when she looks again there's no one there.

At her side, Lemony takes in everything with a grave, quiet air - if he's especially pained to be back in his newly-rebuilt childhood home, the way Kit had been, she can't tell, because he's looked pained by everything that's happenedso far. Grief hangs off the man like an ill-fitting sweater, and colors every word he says, touches every movement.

They enter the study and Olivia draws the doors closed behind her. Something has to have brought him out of hiding, and she'd rather the children not be exposed outright until she can get a sense of why, exactly, he's chosen to reveal himself now.

When she turns back around, she finds Lemony studying the bookshelves, running a finger along the edge of one and examining the titles she'd spent several hours organizing one evening when she'd needed a change of pace from the library. She stands there watching him for a moment, inescapably curious as she always is about anything to do with her partner or his past.

Jacques is more classically handsome, she supposes - although she's probably just a _touch_ biased in that regard - but Lemony isn't without his charms either. He's just as tall and broad-shouldered as his brother, yet he seems somehow smaller, as though the cares of the world have done their best to compress him, to make him huddle into himself. That wry, perpetually self-deprecating look about his face is foreign to her, but his profile and jawline and eye color - those are Jacques' features, through and through.

The door behind her opens, startling her from her examination, and Jacques' voice greets her before she even sees him. "Is everything alright, Olivia? Violet said we had a… visitor."

He jerks to a dead stop in the doorway when he sets eyes on Lemony, his face draining of all color so quickly Olivia steps toward him in alarm, for a bizarre moment half-expecting him to collapse.

"Lemony," he says, and then nothing else, his gaze searching his brother's face rapidly, flicking over it as though checking for injuries or… something else. Answers, maybe.

"Hello Jacques," Lemony responds with that almost-smile from before, "you look well."

Jacques has always rallied quickly, and fortunately now is no exception. He straightens, and something about him seems to relax and go stiff at the same instant. "You don't."

 _Family is a funny thing_ , she remembers, and thinks about her sister. Olivia loves her to this day, but in all her life, no one has ever hurt her more deeply than Miranda.

"I'll go make some tea," she decides, moving for the door, but Jacques' hand flashes out and catches her wrist, gently desperate. When she meets his eyes, she sees something very much like uncertainty there. It's a jarring expression on his normally-confident face.

 _Please stay_ , she reads, and oh, she's never been able to refuse those eyes of his, not from the first moment she met him. She can do nothing but nod, and he squeezes her arm once in gratefulness before turning back to his brother.

Lemony looks between them, expression inscrutable. "I came because I have dire news," he says in that flat tone of his.

"You usually do," Jacques replies on a sigh, tugging Olivia along with him as he moves to take a seat in one of the armchairs by his desk. She takes the other quietly, feeling like an intruder no matter how badly Jacques wants her here.

"Olaf is near," Lemony says, tucking both hands into the pockets of his trousers, and Olivia tenses, snaps to look at her partner. Aside from a sudden vice grip around the arms of his chair, he doesn't react.

"That _is_ dire news," she says, "but how do you know? Jacquelyn hasn't reported anything to us."

"Jacquelyn can only report what is reported to her, and many of the volunteers are decidedly less noble and dedicated than they once were. I saw him in the tunnels, not three days ago," says Lemony, turning to look out the study window. The lighting paints him as the perfect brooding hero straight out of a classic novel.

Jacques leans forward sharply, worry creasing his brows. "Where? Did he see you?"

"No," says Lemony, "even a clever person can see only what he or she wants to, and he's quite convinced I'm dead. I suspect he's been hiding in one of the old Snicket safe houses."

Jacques flinches at his words, almost imperceptibly, but Lemony isn't done. "I followed him as closely as I dared, but I lost him somewhere near the remains of the Quagmire estate. Esme was with him, as determined to get her hands on the sugar bowl as she ever was."

Olivia feels grimace touch her face before she can quell it. _Vile woman._ "We need to assume then that they know where the children are."

"That's likely, yes," Lemony says, almost absently.

It was inevitable, she supposes - Eleanora Poe had run several stories in the _Punctilio_ shortly after her husband's visit to the manor, and had _begged_ to be allowed inside for interviews, claiming freedom of the press and the people's right to know and other such nonsense. Olivia had explained, in no uncertain terms, that she'd eat glass before letting her step so much as a pinky toe over the threshold of the house, but the damage had been done - the whole city now knows the children are alive and well and safe at Snicket Manor.

"Should we move them?" Olivia asks.

Jacques shakes his head before the question is even fully out of her mouth. "This house is completely fireproof," he says, "I can't say the same for any of the safe houses, or even for Headquarters or Hotel Denouement. If he wants to get to the children, he'll have to come in the front door, and he won't get far if he tries that - I'd wager he knows it, too. This is still the safest place for the children."

 _And anyway_ , she mentally adds, conceding, _the children need to stop running_. If they pack up and leave now, after being reassured time and time again that they're all safe, then all the progress they've made so far could be undone.

If they end up having to fight this battle, Olivia would rather it be here, on their home turf, than anywhere else. "I just wish we could find him and be done with this," she says, suddenly exhausted.

Jacques leans over and takes her hand, then turns back to Lemony, who is still staring aimlessly out the window. Olivia feels a profound pang of sympathy at the grief on his face.

"Olaf knowing the location of a Snicket safe house is ill news," says Jacques. "If he knows about one, there's a good chance he knows about others. They were a viable backup plan until now."

"Are these safe houses separate from VFD's?" Olivia asks.

"Our family kept them in case of fire," Lemony explains. "They weren't on any official VFD lists, a precaution that paid off after the schism. No one was supposed to know about them but members of the Snicket family."

"With a few exceptions, apparently," Jacques says, aiming a look at his brother's back that falls just short of exasperation.

"That mob of angry snake charmers were after her, I had to do something," Lemony says, brow furrowed, and Olivia knows they're talking about Beatrice without having to ask.

"You clearly weren't the only one who bent the rules back in the day," says Jacques, "not if Olaf is using the safe houses too."

This time Lemony does look back, and the two men exchange an expression that Olivia can't read.

"You'll have to warn Kit," Lemony finally says.

It's Jacques' turn to grimace, now. "That might not be the best idea," he says, "not if we want to keep her out of harm's way."

"You think she'll endanger herself to confront him? In her condition?"

"She might not see it as endangering herself. She might gamble on the hope he won't harm her."

Olivia frowns, opens her mouth to ask _why on earth would she gamble on a thing like that when he's hellbent on harming children_ , then stops, blinks, because she realizes all at once that it's the wrong question. The question she should be asking is, _Which Snicket told Olaf about the safe house?_

 _Oh,_ she thinks again, connecting the dots of the conversation as a migraine starts to build behind her eyes, _oh, of course._

"She'd lose that gamble," Lemony says, and his voice is full of a dreadful, ringing certainty that sends chills down her spine. "There's nothing that would turn him back from his revenge, not now."

He moves to stare out the window again, leaning his forehead against the pane and closing his eyes. Looking at him feels too intimate, suddenly, so she turns instead to Jacques, watches his shoulders sag.

She remembers, then, how he'd begged Olaf in that jailhouse in the village, how he'd pleaded with his former friend to make the right choice, to come back to the firefighting side. It was a chance she would never have extended to him and one that Olaf had, predictably, spurned. But the Snickets and the Baudelaires and the Quagmires and Olaf - they had all been friends, once, had all been varying degrees of noble and well-read and well-intentioned, and now they're all scattered, dead, or treacherous. It breaks her heart.

"I know it's not my business," she begins softly, and when Jacques makes as though to protest, she holds up a hand, signalling to let her finish. "It's not my business, but I think you should tell her. From what I understand, Kit is formidable no matter her condition, and anyway, she deserves to know. Families are strongest when they stand together, and I for one would feel more comfortable with as many extra eyes keeping a lookout for him as possible."

The brothers are quiet for a long moment, and she doesn't know what they'll decide and doesn't need to. Like she'd said, it's not her business. She just… she doesn't want them to isolate each other any more than they already have. She knows what that can do to a family, do to siblings, and she doesn't want it to happen to the Snickets. She may not know Kit or Lemony particularly well, but she loves Jacques, and Jacques loves them, and so _she_ loves them. They are now just as much hers as he is, as the children are - she wants them to find the happiness she's found, that Jacques is starting to find.

A huge part of that, though, is bringing Olaf to justice, and they'll need all hands on deck to do it.

"If anyone's going to tell her, it ought to be you," Jacques says, watching his brother carefully. It takes Olivia a moment to realize that he's tense again, braced for a fight he seems to know is coming.

Lemony turns back again. He looks exhausted. "We both know that's a bad idea. I took a terrible risk even coming here, I can't risk our enemies tracking me to her doorstep."

"We thought you were _dead_ , Lemony. Kit's been beside herself. She deserves to hear from you."

"I thought the same of you," Lemony says, terse. It's a fair point, Olivia thinks, having believed it herself for however brief a time, but she doesn't dare say so. "I'm an avid reader of the _Punctilio_ , if only because of their obsession with the Baudelaire children. Imagine my surprise when I saw your picture on the front page weeks ago, announcing your untimely demise."

"The situation at the Village of Fowl Devotees was unfortunate but unavoidable. If you'd been in contact, I could have signalled to let you know I was still alive, as I did with Kit. _You_ were content to let us all think you'd dropped off the face of the planet, or drowned yourself in your misery over -"

" _Don't_ say her name," Lemony breathes out, raw, trembling like he'll collapse at the slightest provocation. "Please. I can't yet bear to hear it."

There's a beat of tense, heavy silence. "You can't run forever," Jacques finally says, "Let us help you, Lemony. Come home."

"I can't," Lemony says, and nothing else, and Olivia remembers how Kit had said the same thing, and how Jacques had looked as pained then as he does now.

"Not even for Violet?" she says, without even thinking about it. She can't quite meet either man's eyes, though both snap to look at her.

"Why would she be relevant?" Lemony asks, too quickly.

Olivia bites her lip. "I think you know why," she says. "It's why you've been watching the Baudelaires, wasn't it? It wasn't just about… their mother." She catches herself just in time to keep from saying the name, but Lemony flinches anyway.

Jacques is oddly quiet, she notices, but he doesn't look surprised. If he hadn't known, he'd definitely suspected. _Interesting._

"Violet isn't mine," Lemony says, "not in any way that counts."

"For once in your life, Lemony, be clear," Jacques says, but there's no heat behind his words. "Are you her father or aren't you?"

"Bertrand Baudelaire is her father," says Lemony, firmly, "that can never come in to question. Trust me," he continues, looking to Olivia now, nearly imploring, "the farther I am from her, the safer she is. The Snicket family's enemies, _my_ enemies, don't end with Olaf."

"She ought to know you," Olivia says, not fully certain it's true, but hoping it is, "as a friend, if nothing else. Those children have precious few."

A flicker of that same longing she'd seen in the backyard passes over Lemony's face again, more fleeting than a shooting star, and then it's gone. "Not now," he says, "not yet."

He turns back to Jacques, seeming desperate to end the conversation. "I need to go - I've already stayed longer than I meant to. Will you pass the message on to Kit? Tell her to be careful?"

For a moment, Jacques is quiet, watching him with an expression that almost makes Olivia think he's going to refuse, going to force his brother to do it himself. But Jacques has never been that sort of person, and he's not about to start being one now.

"I will," he says on a sigh, "just take care of yourself. And know that you always have a place here, with us."

Lemony nods once, slowly, then turns to her. "It's good to finally meet you, Miss Caliban," he says, "I don't believe the children or my brother could be in better hands than yours."

That is… an _incredibly_ flattering thing for him to say, all things considered. "Thank you," she manages. "Will you find some way to let us know you're safe? It would ease our minds greatly."

"I am rarely safe," Lemony says, "but I'll do my best."

Jacques stands to walk him out, but Olivia remains behind, wanting to give them this small bit of privacy at least. She stands, absently straightens the books on the shelf, checks the window to make sure it's locked. She makes a mental note to do the same for all of the windows in the house, and to check the grates on the fireplace flues, and wonders if she and Jacques shouldn't start sleeping with their bedroom door open.

She has a sudden urge to bang her head against the wall, and quells it, but barely. _Olaf is near._ She'd suspected, of course, they all had, but that's different from _knowing_ it. That's different from him actually being confirmed to be _in the city_.

It's infuriating that the information Lemony brought them, while incredibly valuable, doesn't actually put them that much closer to catching Olaf. It's good of him, but there's nothing they can _do_ with it, besides narrow down their search radius, until Olaf actively makes a move.

 _Stars,_ Olivia thinks, _this has got to end._

When Jacques comes back several minutes later, he brings tea with him. She'd have kissed him for it if he didn't have such a pensive expression on his face.

"He's gone, then?" she asks, gratefully accepting a cup.

Jacques is quiet for a long moment as he pours a cup for himself, but doesn't drink it, merely holds it loosely in two hands, absent. "Yes," he finally says.

She doesn't want to press him, but she _does_ have questions, and it's likely she'll need time to process the answers before facing the children again.

"Did you know? About Violet?"

He sucks in a deep breath, tosses a small, fond smile at her. It's flattering that he doesn't appear surprised she'd worked it out. "Not for certain," he says. "I suspected, of course, Kit and I both did - Beatrice left Lemony and married Bertrand so quickly, and when Violet was born almost a month premature, or so Beatrice told everyone… well. The timing was too convenient. But you would never have known, if you'd listened to Bertrand talk about Violet - he loved that girl like she'd personally hung the stars. I don't know if he knew she wasn't his, but I doubt it would have changed much if he had." A pause. "Good man, Bertrand Baudelaire."

Olivia takes a bracing sip of tea, trying to collect her thoughts. "What should we do?"

Jacques sighs. "I don't know that we ought to _do_ anything."

"If she ever finds out we knew, and didn't tell her, she'll never trust us again, Jacques. She deserves to know."

"She deserves to know what's in the sugar bowl too, after nearly being killed over it, but that doesn't mean knowing is to her benefit. If anything, discovering that Lemony is her biological father might only serve to drive a wedge between her and the only family she has left."

He's got a point there, but… "They've been kept in the dark for so long about so much."

Jacques nods, accepting her point, and takes a sip of tea as though to bolster himself. "I don't know that there's a right answer here, Olivia," he says after a long moment. "I think all we can do is what we feel is best for the children, for Violet."

"So we don't tell her." Her headache has returned with a vengeance - she raises a hand to her forehead as though to rub it away.

"For now," Jacques says. "We ought to deal with one crisis at a time."

Ah yes, the other elephant in the room. "So we find Olaf, and then we revisit this conversation."

Jacques nods, and Olivia sighs, tilting her head against the back of her chair. "I'd feel better about that if it wasn't for his rat-like ability to maneuver himself out of tight spots."

"We'll get him, Olivia," Jacques says, and in that moment she can see that he's just as exhausted by the whole affair as she is. She reaches over and takes his hand, entwining her fingers with his.

"I know," she says.

There's nothing else to say. The pair of them simply sit there, drinking tea in silence as thunder rumbles outside, each weighed down with the knowledge of their foes drawing nearer, and with secrets they were never meant to keep.

Neither one of them moves for a long, long time.

* * *

 **A/N: Surprise! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me! So… anybody up for chapter five? *sweats nervously***  
 **But! The good news is that the next and final chapter is fully 100% complete and will be posted some time next weekend, which is part of why this whole thing took so long. The other reasons include vacation, computer troubles, and my full-time job, but! I did it, and I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think!**

 **As ever, I don't own anything but the plot and the dogs.**

 **Special thanks to lady-stormbraver who is a rockstar generally, but specifically as a beta.**

 **Special thanks also to everyone who followed, fav'd, and reviewed! You guys are the best!**

 **Don't forget to let me know what you think!**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Starcrier.**


	5. The Daring Denouement

Chapter V

The Daring Denouement

Despite Lemony's warning, everything is quiet for just over a month until Olivia wakes late one night in a cold sweat, fumbling for the switch on her lamp and the calendar on her bedside table almost before her eyes are even fully open. Her glasses skitter to the floor, but she ignores them in favor of squinting at the calendar, trying to make out her own handwriting.

Her stomach drops. _Stars, I'm an idiot._ "Jacques," she says, nudging him with her foot until he grumbles, turns over.

"What is it? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. It's the Quagmires."

 _That_ gets his eyes open. "What about them?"

"Their birthday is in _two days._ "

Jacques is quiet for a moment as his sleep-addled brain processes what she's saying. And then he groans, and buries his face in the pillow.

" _We forgot._ "

* * *

"Are you absolutely _sure_ you wouldn't rather have both dogs?"

Olivia loves Jacques with all her heart, but if he asks her that question one more time, she's going to start throwing things at him, starting with the tea tray he's just thoughtfully placed in her lap.

"Jacques, we've been over this. If I can't be there to watch your back, I want you to have the next best thing. Scylla will stay and help me keep an eye on things here, and you'll take Charybdis. It only makes sense."

"I just hate the thought of you being here without adequate protection."

Olivia sighs. "This house is both sturdy and fireproof, much like a certain partner of mine," she says with a pointed look, earning herself a soft smile in return. "All the doors and windows are locked, I'll have my spyglass and Scylla with me, and I'm a very skilled librarian. I'll be just fine."

"Olivia?" Quigley's voice from the doorway of their bedroom makes Jacques turn, sharply, comforting smile already in place.

Olivia feels a slight pang of guilt at the sight of the worry on the boy's face, and on the faces of his siblings behind him, but then thinks of all the decorating she has to do and promptly shoves it away. "Happy birthday, Quigley, Duncan, Isadora," she says. "I'm so very sorry I can't make it to the beach with you all today."

"Don't be sorry," says Isadora. "We ought to stay here today, since you're not feeling well."

"You will do no such thing," Olivia replies in a tone that she hopes leaves no room for argument. "You and Jacques and the Baudelaires and _Charybdis_ ," she adds with another pointed look at her partner, "are going to go and have a marvelous time and then come back here and tell me all about it."

"Are you sure?" asks Duncan. "We don't mind."

"I know you don't, but I do. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I kept you all from having fun today." That part, at least, is true.

The surprise party had been Jacques' idea, but given the time constraints - which are no one's fault but their own, she's still kicking herself about nearly forgetting - they'd had to rush to come up with a plan to get the children out of the house while Olivia remained behind - they'd flipped a coin - to decorate under the guise of fighting a head cold. They'd conscripted the Baudelaires to help them brainstorm, and to her surprise, it had been their idea to take the Quagmires on an outing to Briny Beach.

"We're ready," Klaus had said when Jacques had started to protest, "we've all agreed. We used to love it there, and we've been wanting to go back."

"Amigos!" Sunny had added, which Violet had interpreted to mean: "It would be nice to make some new memories there with our friends."

Olivia and Jacques had reluctantly consented, but she'd pulled him aside later and informed him that if any of the children started to look even slightly unhappy during any point in the trip, he was to remove them from the spot posthaste and bring them straight back, even if it meant the surprise was spoiled.

There will only be a few guests, given that the children don't, at this moment, have any friends outside of each other and won't be able to make any until Olaf is caught and it's safe for them to return to school. Jacquelyn and Larry, the waiter, will be in attendance, as will, to her surprise, Kit, and her partner Dewey Denouement. None of them will be staying long, so as not to risk overwhelming the children, but Olivia had thought it would be nice for them see the show of support, and, of course, rake in more presents.

The Quagmires haven't asked for a single thing, of course, and Olivia privately suspects that if she and Jacques hadn't remembered on their own, they would have been content to never mention their birthday was even happening. But given everything they've lost, everything they've been through, she's determined to make sure they experience this the way children should, the way she hopes their parents would have wanted.

They've all been… _quiet_ since Lemony's visit, hesitant and watchful and just a touch clingy. It's the exact outcome Olivia had been worried about, but she and Jacques had agreed that it was in the children's best interest to know that Olaf was near. They'd punctuated the warning with promises they'd catch him, of course, and the children had offered tight smiles and nodded their agreement, but Olivia knows how frightened they are, and how _tired_ they must be of being frightened.

So the party is for the Quagmires, yes. But it's really for all of them, a promise that Olaf is losing his grip on their lives and soon - _very_ soon, if Olivia has anything to say about it - will disappear from them entirely.

"If you're sure," Quigley says, drawing her from her thoughts, and she smiles.

"I promise I'm sure. You all have fun, and when you get back there will be cake."

"Feel better, Olivia!" Violet winks at her from her spot in the hall, struggling to stand on tiptoe to see her over the other children's heads. The boys in particular are starting to hit their growth spurts - Klaus is already almost level with Olivia herself, and might end up outgrowing Jacques.

She smiles at them all, sudden fondness moving her nearly to tears. "I'll be fine. It's just a slight cold, nothing rest won't cure."

The children trickle away, the Baudelaires with conspiratorial looks, the Quagmires with dubious ones, but Jacques lags behind.

"Call me on the car phone if you need anything at all," he says lowly. "I won't stray far from the taxi."

"You're worrying too much," she says wryly, sipping at her tea. "I'm not actually sick, you know."

"Promise me," he says, moving to stand over her. His eyes are grave and firm, unyielding in a way he rarely is with her.

Moved, she reaches up to touch his face, smiling when he lays a hand over hers on his cheek. She thinks of the tiny box waiting patiently at the back of her sock drawer, the way she's been doing more and more often lately, before shaking the thought off in case he somehow reads her mind.

"I promise," she says, "and that goes for you too. Anything goes wrong on your end, call me and I'll come running."

He leans down, plants a kiss on her forehead. "I promise. We'll be back in a few hours. If you need any help setting up, remember Jacquelyn said she's fine with taking off early."

"I remember," she says, following the line of his back as he moves away from her. "Have fun."

He pauses in the doorway to give her a wink. "Without you?" he asks. "How can I?"

* * *

Olivia waits until she's heard front door slam and the taxi engine sputter off before all but leaping from the bed. There's too much to be done in too little time, and she wants to make sure everything is perfect for the Quagmire's first birthday in their new home.

Scylla dutifully follows at her heels as she moves around the house, setting up banners and streamers and pulling up the balloons from the cellar that she and Jacques had spent most of the night previous blowing up, and dragging the children's presents out from the back of their closet. There are new commonplace books with fancy fountain pens, and clothes and a few board games, and of course gift vouchers for local bookstores. It's quite a haul, if she says so herself, but it's not nearly as much as Olivia feels they deserve. Again, however, she's trying to avoid overwhelming them, or favoring one group of children over the other - which she most certainly isn't, and the Baudelaires would never accuse her of such, but Klaus didjust spend _his_ most recent birthday in a jail cell waiting to burn at the stake for a crime he didn't commit, so she's going to have to go all out during the holidays this year to compensate.

Stars, she hopes today isn't a disaster.

The work helps take her mind off her fretting, anyway - there's quite a lot to do but she doesn't mind it, even if this big old house does feel rather _lonely_ without its other occupants. It occurs to her that this is probably the longest time she's been alone since reuniting with Jacques at Caligari Carnival. The knowledge is… strange.

That box in her drawer springs to mind again. She shoves the thought away; the timing still isn't right and won't be until they're safe again, otherwise she'd have taken it out and just _asked_ him, ages ago. She'd have done a lot of things ages ago, actually.

She's about to pull the ice cream out of the freezer to prepare the root beer floats for the party when Scylla, who has been lounging on the rug between the kitchen and the dining room, suddenly sits up, ears pricked in awareness. She doesn't growl, and her hackles lay flat, but her head tilts quizzically.

Olivia frowns, pausing in her work. "Something the matter, girl?"

Scylla, for obvious reasons, does not reply, but instead gets to her feet and moves towards the back door, staring at it with her head still tilted.

"Scylla, lie down, there's nothing out there."

The dog turns to look at her and flicks an ear towards the door as if to say, _If there's nothing out there, then what was that noise?_

Inexplicably, Olivia gets a chill down her spine, and then scoffs at herself. She crosses to the door and pulls it open unceremoniously. "You're being paranoid, missy."

Scylla apparently doesn't agree, because the moment Olivia opens the door, she bolts through it, pausing on the deck to scent the air for only a second before sprinting in the direction of the bitter apple trees that ring the property several yards away.

"Scylla!" she calls, moves to follow her, when the chime of the front doorbell suddenly rings through the house.

Something in her goes abruptly still. _Who could that be at this hour?_ she thinks, apropos of nothing. It's the middle of the day, after all - maybe Jacquelyn had decided to come early.

 _Without calling first?_ asks that voice again, and she scowls at it.

"Now who's being paranoid?" she says, even as her pulse beats a war drum in her ears. She looks to the phone on the kitchen wall, considers, then shakes herself.

 _Relax, Olivia,_ she tells herself. _There's no reason to call him_.

The doorbell goes off again, and then a third time. Not Jacquelyn, then - she'd never be so rude. Almost as though she's watching it play out outside of her body, she sees herself close the back door, run her hands down her trousers, move towards the front of the house.

She fingers the spyglass in her pocket. Her heels _click-click-click_ on the hardwood. The doorbell chimes twice more.

 _It's nothing, it's nothing, it's nothing._ Bizarrely, her dread seems to increase with every reassurance - which is ridiculous, because nothing is wrong. One of her guests has arrived early, or it's a delivery person, or it's Poe again, making a nuisance of himself.

"One moment!" she hears herself say. The front door looms into sight - she crosses to it, forces a smile, throws it open.

Her gaze locks with a pair of shiny, shiny eyes.

* * *

 _Olaf is near._ The thought loops like a stuck record, still colored with Lemony's dire monotone. The villain on her doorstep is wearing thick glasses to hide his monobrow and long dress pants to hide his ankle and a tilted fedora to hide his rather distinctive hairstyle, but it's unmistakably, unquestionably him, as it always is.

For a long, breathless moment, horror roots her to the spot, freezes her smile on her face, sends her stomach tumbling with nausea.

She is suddenly, intensely aware of the fact that the last time she set eyes on this man, he'd tried to throw her into a pit of starving lions, and then threw a knife at her head with startling accuracy when that failed. She's only alive right now because Jacques had intervened both times, and he's nowhere nearby.

For whatever reason, the thought of her partner causes rationale to return like a light switching on. Thinking quickly, she says, "Good morning," as casually as she can manage, then adds, "can I help you?"

A crooked smile that makes her stomach turn lurks at the corner of his mouth - he's as arrogant as always, and no doubt revelling in the belief that his idiotic disguise has worked. "Hello, hello, hello," he greets in what is probably supposed to be a German accent but falls miserably short. "I am Hans Brandstifter, a city-appointed social worker, here to check on the very wealthy children in your care."

 _Over my dead body_ , she thinks, looking him over - the suit he's wearing is almost comically oversized, but would actually be rather nice if weren't for a few oddly-placed grass stains here and there. There's a tear at the shoulder of his jacket, too, as though he'd been involved in a scuffle - she spares a moment to pray that she isn't going to find an _actual_ social worker dead in the bushes somewhere later.

 _Stall him_ , she thinks, _or it'll be you in the bushes._ She'd fooled him once before, after all, and she can do it again - she's a _much_ better actor than he is.

"Why of course!" she says brightly. "We've been expecting you. Won't you come in?"

She steps aside, ignoring his muttered, "You have?" as he moves across the threshold. She'd find his gross inability to act almost funny if it had been anyone else, but he can switch from moronic to menacing on a dime, with often deadly results, and she can't let herself forget that.

"This way," she says, ignoring his misstep as she leads him into the front sitting room. He all but flings himself into an armchair - _Jacques'_ armchair, she realizes with an aborted flinch - and folds his hands in his lap as he takes in the room. The badly-hidden scowl tells her everything she needs to know about his opinion of the manor - she wonders, almost absently, if he'd ever been here before it burned.

His glassy eyes trail over the party decorations she's hung up all over the room, scan the banner that dangles from the beams overhead.

 _Happy 14th Birthday, Duncan, Isadora, and Quigley!_

His eyes come to a stop on the final name, expression changing in a way she can't read but doesn't like, and something frightened and angry wakes up inside her.

 _You can't have them, you vile, disgusting man_ , she thinks, _I won't let you._

"I had thought Quigley Quagmire burned to death in the same fire that killed his parents," Olaf says, almost idly. His gaze is piercing - she feels like she's being dissected.

Olivia can only nod; the less information he has, the better. "Quigley Quagmire is gone," she lies, remembering how Jacques had handled the subject with Mr. Poe, "but it's still his birthday, too. I thought it would help the other children cope."

Olaf watches her for a long, long moment, and Olivia doesn't know what he's searching for in her face, doesn't know how much he already knows. But it's too late to back down, so the only thing she can do is press forward.

"I'm delighted you could make it," she says, desperate to draw him back to the present and preoccupy him with maintaining his cover. "It's so nice to know that the city is taking all the necessary steps to ensure the children are finally safe."

"Yes, yes," says Olaf impatiently, "but where are the little brats - er, angels, sorry, my English is…" he lets his voice trail off in faux-sheepishness, giving the universal hand gesture for "so-so".

Olivia thinks fast. "Why, they're sleeping, of course," she says. "Orphans actually need to sleep eighteen hours a day for optimal health. But as a city-appointed social worker, I'm sure you know that already."

"Of course, of course, I was only testing you," says Olaf. "And your boyfriend then, is he… around?"

Olivia wants to grimace at such an infantile and… _insufficient_ term being applied to her partner, but quells the urge just in time. The question is a tricky one - if she says he's here, Olaf could lash out, but if she says he isn't, she'll be in even greater danger than she already is.

Olivia is formidable in her own right, she knows that. But Olaf has extensive history with Jacques, and it's Jacques he's afraid of, and without that deterrent, she's not sure how long she could keep him at bay.

She gambles. "My… _boyfriend_ is also sleeping. He's a taxi driver in the city, you see, and it's exhausting work - when he's home he sleeps nearly as long as the children do, these days."

It's the wrong thing to say - Olaf's brow furrows in clear suspicion, doubtless because anyone who's ever had even a passing acquaintance with her partner can tell that he's not the type to sleep the day away.

 _Oops._ She scrambles to distract him. "I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing, perhaps you could come back another time, when they're all awake?"

"No no," he says, and her heart sinks, "my inspection of wealthy orphans must be done today. The children must be woken."

"And Jacques, too?" she says, mostly just to watch him panic, and for once in his miserable life he doesn't disappoint.

"No," he says, fingers tightening around the arms of his chair, eyes darting wildly around as though he expects Jacques to jump out from behind the sofa at any moment, "no, that will not be necessary. Only the children must be taken - ah, awakened, of course."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea, Mr. Brandstifter," she says. "Think of their health!"

"I am a city-appointed social worker!" barks Olaf, and she doesn't flinch at his raised tone but it's a near thing. "You will take me to the children at once!"

 _Oh I will, will I?_ she thinks with a tight smile, before getting to her feet. "If you insist," she says, "but they'll be quite upset to have to wake up so early in the day."

An idea comes to her like a match striking. "I better make some tea to console them - oh, Mr. Brandstifter, I'm so sorry, I should have offered you some the moment you walked in the door! I'm afraid the party has me all in a tizzy. Let me get you a cup before we go up."

Annoyance flares across his expression, as she'd hoped. "No, that won't be necessary," he says, "I simply wish to see the children as soon as possible."

"Nonsense," Olivia replies. "There's no need to be so polite. I've never met a _true German_ who didn't love a cup of tea that was as bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword."

This is a lie, but she's not prepared for the way Olaf visibly flinches, faltering like she'd reached out and slapped him - and while that's something she'd very much like to do, it's not _quite_ the effect she'd been going for. Still, he nods, so she counts it as a win.

"If you insist," he says, but there's a dark note in his voice, in his eyes, that sends a shiver slipping down her spine.

"Why don't you wait here, I'll go rustle it up and then I'll take you to the children," she says.

"Fine," he snaps, "just make it quick."

His act is slipping, which isn't good - if he drops it entirely she'll really be in hot water. She vacates the room as quickly as she can while still attempting to appear nonchalant.

The second she enters the kitchen, however, she lunges for the phone on the wall, cradling the receiver against her shoulder and twisting her fingers in the cord to try to keep them from trembling. She reaches for the first number to dial the taxi phone before halting abruptly, hand suspended halfway to the button.

 _I promise,_ she'd said, had looked her partner dead in the face and swore to call him if the slightest thing went wrong, and he'd accepted that she would without question because he has never, ever doubted her word, not once in the entire time they've known each other. Just as she has never doubted his - she knows, the way she knows the measure of Jacques' breaths as he sleeps and what happens in his nightmares, that if she calls him right now, he'll come running.

And stars, that's exactly why she can't do it.

 _I'm sorry, Jacques_ , she thinks, and makes a different call.

She dials the new number, fills the teakettle, and stands on tiptoe to peer out the kitchen window to see if Scylla has come back into view - and she hasn't, which is deeply troubling.

 _Where are you, girl?_

The phone rings only once before the person on the other end picks up. "Jacquelyn Scieszka," Olivia greets, the words coming out in a breathless rush of relief.

"Olivia Caliban," Jacquelyn replies in that typical no-nonsense way of hers. "How are the decorations coming?"

"Splendidly," Olivia says, then, "Olaf is here."

There is a beat of stunned silence, punctuated with what sounds like distant coughing in the background on the other end, but it only lasts a split second before Jacquelyn recovers herself with her usual efficiency. "Olaf is there? At the manor?"

"He's in my sitting room, waiting for me to bring him tea."

"You let him _in?_ "

"He's disguised and I'm playing along. I need backup."

"Right. I'll call Jacques."

"You can't!" Olivia hisses, clinging desperately to the phone as she looks over her shoulder, half-expecting Olaf to appear any second. "You can't call him, Jacquelyn. Someone else."

Another beat of silence. "I can see who else we have in the area, but he is _your_ partner, Olivia."

 _Stars, don't you think I know that?_ Olivia pulls the phone away from her ear for a moment to swallow back a scream. There is no one on the planet she wants more than Jacques Snicket right now, but she's not the only one at risk here.

She takes a breath, recovers herself, puts the phone on her shoulder again. "He's got the _children_ , Jacquelyn. He can't bring them here if Olaf hasn't been dealt with. They all have to stay away until it's safe." _And someone needs to be left to care for them if something goes wrong here,_ she doesn't say.

"I see," Jacquelyn says. There's more coughing in the background. "I'll alert the other volunteers to send reinforcements, but I'm the closest one in the area - I can be there in twenty minutes if traffic permits. The rest will have to follow."

 _Twenty minutes._ She just has to hold him off for twenty minutes - she can do this.

"Please hurry," she says. "I'll try to keep him occupied until then."

"Be careful, Olivia," Jacquelyn warns, "don't turn your back on him for a moment. Is Esme Squalor with him?"

Olivia's stomach turns with nausea again. "I don't know. I haven't seen her, but Scylla chased after something in the backyard right before Olaf arrived and she hasn't come back."

"Right," says Jacquelyn, calmly grim, "I'm on my way."

Olivia opens her mouth to reply, perhaps to urge her to hurry again, when a foreign sound cuts through the eerie silence of the manor. It takes her a moment to recognize it, but when she does, her heart stops.

Somewhere behind the house, Scylla is barking.

 _They only bark when they smell smoke._ Klaus' voice rings with perfect clarity through her memory.

"Olivia? Are you still there?"

Olivia barely hears her; she's bent over the sink, frantically peering out the window in an effort to catch sight of the dog. There's nothing.

"I have to go," she tells Jacquelyn, "something's wrong. Please hurry." She doesn't wait for the other woman's reply, only slams the phone back into place and bolts for the back door.

There's nothing outside - Scylla is still nowhere in sight, and nothing appears to be on fire, but Olivia can still hear her barking. It sounds, bizarrely, like it might be coming from the greenhouse, although how she could have gotten inside on her own is a mystery. She takes a single step in that direction when something, some dire instinct, stops her.

She looks up. Smoke, thick and dark like a stormcloud, writhes out of the eye-shaped window on the third floor of the manor.

Olivia's stomach plummets. _The library._

She darts back into the house just in time for the alarm and the sprinkler system to kick in, drenching her instantly, but she doesn't stop or even slow. Olaf, predictably, is no longer in the sitting room - she makes for the stairs, kicking her heels off on the way to better run unimpeded. The third floor has never seemed so far away - she takes the steps two at a time and it still somehow feels dreamlike, like she's running in place.

The second floor is empty but looks as though a small cyclone has recently torn through it - Olaf must have come up here the instant her back had turned, seeking the children. When he'd discovered she'd lied to him about their whereabouts, he must have gone straight to the third floor. He _has_ been here before, she realizes, wondering, not for the first time, just how close Olaf and the Snickets had actually been once upon a time.

She stops only for a moment at the foot of the stairwell at the end of the Quagmires' hallway to pull out her spyglass, and then continues up, albeit much more quietly than before. When she finally reaches the third floor, she can see that the door to the library is hanging open. Aside from the screeching of the alarm overhead and the unmistakable crackling of a fire that's somehow still doing its best to cling to life despite the sprinklers, it's completely silent within.

A horrible suspicion overtakes her, one that's confirmed when she steps close enough to see into the room - dozens and dozens of her beloved books have been ripped off the shelves, piled in a heap in the middle of the floor, and cruelly set ablaze, the source of the still-billowing smoke filtering out the window.

It's an act of spite, pure and simple, and something in her _ignites_.

Sheer, indignant outrage flashes through her, makes her careless. She steps into the room without thinking, racing toward the pile of books as though she can somehow do something to salvage them.

It's a mistake. A sudden noise behind her makes her turn, sharply - she spins around just in time to take the hilt of a familiar knife directly to her temple.

A fireworks show goes off in her skull. Her vision whites out for a second, and when she comes back to herself she's on the floor, staring up at the blurry, doubled form of Count Olaf. He's soaked to the bone, just like she is, and his hat and glasses are gone.

His eyes glitter with malice, and in that moment Olivia knows he intends to kill her.

"Snicket's not here to save you this time," he snarls, nearly spitting in his fury. " _Where_ are the _children?_ "

The screaming of the alarm overhead seems to pulse brilliantly behind her eyes, a counterpoint to the ache in her head and the frantic racing of her heart. There's an odd, metallic taste in her mouth, like she's been sucking on pennies.

"What children?" she manages, mostly for lack of anything cleverer, and he _roars_ at her, advancing to snatch at her hair, haul her upright. She struggles, of course she does, but it's difficult to do that when the room won't stay still, when her vision keeps slipping in and out of focus.

"The miserable quaking Quagmires and the Baudelaire brats - I know you're hiding them. Where are they?" He slams her against a bookshelf with enough force to make a few remaining books tumble from their places; they hit the floor with a series of heavy thuds.

An idea sparks behind the haze in her head - she struggles to latch onto it. "Gone," she says when she regains herself enough to speak. "Jacques and I got sick of them. We sent them off in a taxi to the Hinterlands. I think the baby was driving."

He yanks her forward only to slam her back against the bookshelf again, hard enough to make the fireworks return. "Care to try again?" he hisses, so close she can smell the foulness on his breath.

 _Stars,_ she thinks, _I don't want to die like this._

She doesn't, of course, want to die at _all_. When Olaf had nearly killed her at the carnival, she'd screamed with all the breath in her body, terrified out of her mind of being consumed by the lions snarling below her. But more than that, she doesn't want to die _here_ , like this, by Olaf's hand in a ruined library in a house that had only just started to become a home. It would destroy Jacques to find her this way, would destroy the children, might keep them from ever trying to make a place for themselves again.

She thinks about Lemony, and the pain in his eyes, and the grief that dogged his heels and resolves that Jacques can never, ever look like that. Not because of this. Not because of _her_.

 _What do I do?_ she thinks. _Think, Olivia!_

Her eyes flutter open, smoke and dizziness working to blur her vision for only a moment. The room rocks, and nausea ties her stomach in knots - she's not sure how much longer she can keep herself upright.

And then she sees her answer, and the world snaps into vivid focus.

In an instant, she lets her knees give way, slides her body further along the shelf, forcing Olaf to either let her go or readjust his vice grip on her head and move with her. It's viciously painful, and she can feel strands of her hair snap in his hold, but when he hauls her back upright she's within reach of her prize.

His free hand tightens over her windpipe, choking the breath from her, and for a horrible, black second her mind blanks in terror. One of her hands moves to pry at his own over her throat and the other flies out, scrambling for purchase against the shelf. She reaches up, up, up, still clawing at Olaf with her other hand, partially as a distraction but partially in very real desperation.

Wait, he's speaking. "Do you really think you can keep those brats from me?" he sneers in her face, the scent of wine and smoke filling her nostrils, making her nausea resurface.

And then her hand closes around what she'd been looking for, and something inside her stills. "That's the wrong question," she rasps as best she can.

He blinks. "What?"

She smiles. "The question you should be asking is: who would be stupid enough to attack a librarian… in her own _library?_ "

And then she brings down the second-edition copy of _Les Misérables_ with all her might directly onto his skull.

His grip on her vanishes instantly - _Thank you Victor Hugo!_ \- and he collapses at her feet like a marionette with its strings cut. She half-springs, half-stumbles away from the bookcase, searching for her spyglass - _there_. It had rolled beneath an end table near one of the couches, and she makes for it desperately.

A hand closes around her ankle and _yanks_ , hard. She topples to the floor, cracking her chin against the marble tile - blood bursts from her mouth as her teeth drive into her lip.

"Where do you think _you're_ going," he snarls, trying to drag her back. "You have no idea who you're meddling with, girl."

"An arsonist and a murderer and a child abuser and a _very bad actor!_ " she all but shrieks, driving the heel of her free foot into his face - he recoils with a nasty curse and she jerks herself free, scrambling first for her discarded spyglass and then for the door.

She runs smack into Kit Snicket.

"Good morning, Olivia," Kit greets pleasantly, but her eyes are hard and cold as flint. "I heard you might be in need of some help."

Unable to speak for relief and terror and pain, Olivia simply stands there, blinking idiotically. Kit is _ridiculously_ pregnant, seeming fit to burst at any moment, but her stance is open and relaxed, enduring the deluge from the sprinkler system as though nothing whatsoever is out of the ordinary. Her spyglass is out and open by her side, held almost casually, like it's an extension of her arm. Olivia's a little bit in awe.

But then Kit's eyes, kind like Jacques', sad like Lemony's, slide past Olivia and onto the man at her back. Her expression makes something inside Olivia want to run for cover.

"Olaf," Kit says, "it's been a long time."

Olivia turns to see the count staggering to his feet, watching them both with a black snarl on his face. She's gratified to note that there's a cut on his forehead, dripping a steady stream of blood into his eyes, and a wicked-looking gash at the corner of his mouth from where she'd kicked him. It's a strange thing, to be proud of having inflicted pain, and it unsettles her.

"Too long, Kitty," Olaf says, and the woman beside her flinches at the name. "You're looking… enormous."

Kit doesn't acknowledge the statement. "Up to your old tricks, I see," she says, nodding in the direction of the ruined books at his back. "My brother told me you'd returned to the city, but I admit I didn't quite believe you could possibly be that stupid until now."

"I'm just trying to get what I deserve, and you meddling idiots _won't let me_ ," Olaf says. His tone is petulant, accusatory like a child's.

"It looks to me like Olivia just gave you _exactly_ what you deserve, although she was nicer about it than I would have been," Kit says, then frowns. "I'm taking you to the authorities, and I suggest you don't struggle, you'll only embarrass yourself further."

Olaf doesn't appear to be listening, though; his eyes are locked onto the band on Kit's left ring finger that looks suspiciously like an engagement ring. It must be new - Olivia doesn't remember seeing it the last time Kit was here.

"You Snickets and your _librarians_ ," Olaf says with a snarl, spitting the word like a curse in Olivia's direction. "I still can't believe you left me just because I haven't read as many books as _Denouement_."

Olivia winces, the suspicion she'd developed the day Lemony had visited now abruptly confirmed. _Stars, Kit._ Olaf? _Really?_

Kit actually rolls her eyes. "I left you because you tried to kill my brother, and because you put too much sugar in your tea," she says flatly. "And also because you're a reprobate and a miscreant and you bring misery everywhere you go."

Something about Olaf seems to unfurl - there's a steady darkening around his eyes, a dangerous hunch to his posture. Olivia tenses on instinct.

"All of you with your high-minded ideals, pretending you're so much better than I am because you read boring books and know fancy words," Olaf hisses. "VFD is a sham, a _farce!_ "

Olivia recalls, suddenly, the story Jacques had relayed to her during the taxi drive to the remains of the Baudelaire home, the story about the opera and Beatrice and poison darts. Poison darts, and Olaf's parents.

"Maybe," says Kit, and she sounds tired. "Maybe we are. But we _aren't_ the ones starting fires and trying to marry fourteen-year-old girls. That's all you."

There's a strange look that comes into his eyes then, one Olivia can't read and doesn't want to, and he advances slowly, steadily, until he's close enough to reach out and touch Kit if he wants. Olivia tenses again, her knuckles whitening around her grip on her spyglass, but Kit regards him without emotion, nearly as though he isn't moving at all, isn't a threat, isn't _there_.

His eyes glitter again, and he gives an easy, lazy smirk. "Were you jealous, Kitty?"

Kit _does_ react, this time - her fist flashes out quicker than a striking snake. There's a sudden, sickening crunch of bone and Olaf's head snaps back, blood spurting like a fountain from his nose. When he rights himself with an agonized groan several moments later, the smirk is gone, and he's looking at Kit as though he's never seen her before. There's no trace to be found of his usual bravado or drama - Olivia has never seen him so completely out of his element. Stars, he almost looks _wounded_.

"Do not ever," Kit says, as calmly as though they're strolling arm-in-arm down the street, "call me that again."

There's a long, long silence, filled only by the screech of the alarm and water striking the floor. The fire has long since been extinguished, but the damage is done - what little the flame didn't ruin, the water has destroyed; Olivia's not even sure if the books that remain on the shelves are salvageable at this point.

"What now, Snicket?" Olaf finally says, and he's snarling but Olivia thinks there might not be as much heat behind it as before.

"I already told you," says Kit, "I'm taking you to the authorities. Any chance you'd like to tell us where Esme Squalor is?"

"Nope," says Olaf. His hands twitch at his sides. "Do you have your handcuffs on you? I know how much you hate travelling without a pair."

Kit withdraws them from the pocket of her maternity dress before he even finishes speaking. "Turn around, please."

He does, to Olivia's surprise, but there's something off about it, about the way his hands are still twitching, about the way his muscles are tensed, about the look on his face.

"Hands behind your back," Kit tells Olaf, taking a step forward.

"Certainly," he says. And then he lunges, withdrawing the knife from his oversized suit jacket and swinging it wildly in their direction in one fluid movement.

Olivia will never be sure, later, who his intended target is, because she's ready for him before he can connect - there's a shrill clang of metal on metal as his serrated blade slams onto her raised spyglass. Fury flashes across his face as their eyes lock for a stunned, drawn-out moment, but he never gets the chance to act on it because in the same second Kit brings her own spyglass down on the back of his head.

He collapses at Olivia's feet for the second time that day, but this time, he stays there.

For a moment, the two women simply stand there, staring at his prone form, and then each other, unable to speak. Olivia realizes she's freezing - the water coming down feels like it's being pumped directly from the Stricken Stream. Her head aches something awful, and there's a sudden, painful burning behind her eyes.

"Are you alright?" Kit finally asks, kicking the knife away from Olaf's slack hand and to the other side of the room. Now that Olivia looks closer, she can see that there's a strange pallor to her face, and she's holding quite a bit of tension in her shoulders - perhaps she'd been more affected by the confrontation than she'd let on.

"I've been better," Olivia answers honestly. "Thank you for coming. Did Jacquelyn call you? I thought she said there wasn't another volunteer in the area."

"I wasn't scheduled to be," Kit says. "I was on my way to the hospital when Jacquelyn put out the alert to all volunteers in the city."

Olivia's eyes widen in instantaneous alarm. "What? Why? Are _you_ alright?"

Kit gives a small smile that, if Olivia isn't mistaken, looks to be faintly touched with pain. "I'm perfectly fine. I'm just currently in labor."

" _What?_ " Olivia demands, incredulous. "And you just decided to stop and confront a villainous fire-starter on the way? Are you out of your _mind?_ "

"He would have killed you if I hadn't," Kit says, and Olivia tries not to flinch, because, fair. "And anyway, the contractions are only just now starting to get -" she winces, breathes out like she's been gut punched, rolls her shoulders, "- _close._ "

"How close are they?" Olivia asks, drawing near enough to take her by the arm until the contraction passes.

Kit is silent for a long moment, then, through gritted teeth, says, "About five minutes. Also, I think my water just broke."

Olivia looks down to confirm. "Stars. _Stars_ , alright." She gives herself two seconds to panic, then swallows it down and forces herself to think. "Well, we can't stay here with the sprinklers running."

"Can you shut them off?"

"Not on my own," Olivia says. "I can't turn the handle for the shut-off valve. I've been meaning to have Violet loosen it for exactly this scenario, but we've had other things on our mind." She wracks her brain for a solution, but it's difficult to think around her various aches and pains and the way the room is spinning.

And then she hears Scylla, her frantic barking carrying over the alarm through the open window of the library. "Come on," Olivia says, pocketing her spyglass, "I know where we can go."

"We can't leave him unsupervised, not even if he's unconscious," Kit says, gesturing to Olaf's sprawled form. Olivia thinks fast - she grabs the handcuffs from Kit and loops one end around his wrist, and the other around the sturdy leg of a sofa. It's not perfect, but he's unlikely to regain consciousness any time soon and he's not exactly in great enough physical shape to lift a couch if he does, anyway. It's the most they have time for, at any rate.

"Jacquelyn and the rest will be here soon," Kit says as Olivia leads her out of the room. "She'll bring paramedics and probably a fire truck, if I know her."

"How would she even know we needed them?"

"It's Jacquelyn," Kit says by way of explanation, "she's prepared for everything. Also," she continues with a wince, "they tend to be necessary whenever Olaf shows up."

The other woman is in visible pain now, sweat beading at her hairline as she allows Olivia to help her down the stairs to the second floor, and then to the first. They have to stop every few minutes as wave after wave of contractions sweep over Kit, nearly knocking her off her feet every time. Olivia knows, on some bitterly instinctual level, that Jacquelyn's help won't make it in time.

"Hopefully Jacques won't shout at me for too long when he finds out about all this," she says, mostly just to help distract Kit from her pain.

"Jacques _shouts_ at you?" the other woman sounds so indignant on her behalf that Olivia actually laughs.

"No, never once. But if anything could make him, this might be what does it. I promised I'd call him if anything went wrong, but..." She trails off as guilt slams into her like a physical blow. She's never broken a promise to him before, and for it to be _this_ , well.

"But you couldn't," Kit says firmly. "You did what you had to. He'll understand."

"Right," Olivia says, but Kit must hear something of doubt in her voice, because she fixes her with a knowing look.

"He _will_ , Olivia," she says. "I know my brother. And if he doesn't, just tell me and I'll knock some sense back into him." She looks like she might want to say something else, but instead bends double again, groaning in pain. Olivia braces her as best she can, murmuring soothing encouragements and taking her weight until she's ready to move on. It's agonizing, especially since she's in quite a bit of pain herself, but there's nothing to be done about it.

They make it to the kitchen after what feels like years, and Olivia stops only once to grab as many fresh hand towels out of the drawer as she can and switch off the burner under the now-screaming teapot before making her way towards the back door.

"The greenhouse?" Kit pants as they move as quickly as they can manage across the back deck. She's nearly breathless with pain now; sweat streams in rivers down her face.

"It's clean and climate-controlled and not currently spraying water from the ceiling," Olivia says regretfully. "It's our best shot until the paramedics arrive."

"You'll have to help me," Kit says, and Olivia blinks at her.

"That was the plan, yes."

Kit seems surprised by her immediate acceptance. "Have you ever done this before?"

"No, but I read a few books on the subject when I was much younger. I was curious about how the process worked - of course then I only succeeded in making myself vaguely nauseated for several hours, but still. I remember the basics, anyway."

"I _love_ librarians," Kit murmurs with a shaky little laugh, and then bends double once more, this time with a deep, pained cry. Olivia swallows back her fear as best she can - the greenhouse is so _close…_

"Come on, Kit, just a little farther. You can do this."

"Just… just a moment," she breathes once she regains herself enough to speak. "I just need a little time."

"I'm afraid you're out of time, actually," says a horribly familiar voice from behind them, and Olivia's heart leaps into her throat. She whips around, bracing herself in front of Kit, already knowing who she's going to see.

Esme Squalor stands before them in a dress the exact shade of orange that no one likes, dripping with taffeta and tassels, a riot of vermillion and malice. She's also carrying a harpoon gun, and it's aimed directly at Olivia's heart.

"I have three questions for you, you snivelling little bookworm," she hisses. "Where is my boyfriend, where are those bratty orphans, and, most importantly, _where is my sugar bowl?_ "

"Oh, get _stuffed_ , Esme," Kit rasps before Olivia can come up with an answer, "you and Olaf lost this fight ages ago. The children are safe and the sugar bowl is beyond your reach. You have nothing more to gain."

Esme sneers at her, baring perfect teeth. "You Snickets are all the same," she says, "with your ideals and your books and your horrible fashion sense. I _will_ get my hands on that sugar bowl, even if I have to burn every last one of you to the ground to do it."

"You've been saying that for years, Esme," Kit says, her every breath a pained rasp. "Eventually you're going to have to either follow through or find a new hobby."

Olivia adores Kit, and now owes her her life, but she really needs her to _stop talking,_ especially when a cruel smile touches Esme's perfectly-glossed lips.

 _We could really use that backup about now, Jacquelyn,_ Olivia thinks desperately, never taking her eyes from the harpoon gun.

"I think you're right," Esme says, then turns her gaze on Olivia with a look that makes her shiver. "Tell me something, Snicket, how much do you think _dear_ Jacques would give up for his pet librarian?"

"Not the sugar bowl," Olivia says instantly, not because he wouldn't try but because she'd never let him go through with it. "And not the children, either," she hastens to add.

"You don't think so?" Esme says. "Well, I have more faith in your boyfriend's nobility than you do, I suppose, and I'm eager to test my theory." She looks back to Kit, drums her perfect manicure on the body of the gun in her hands. "Fortunately, I only need just the one hostage to get Snicket to heel - his dead sister will have to serve as an example of what will happen if he doesn't."

Olivia goes cold. That she's willing to kill Kit at all, who has the greater emotional tie to Jacques, and not Olivia herself, who has known him for less than a year, is telling. Olivia would bet all the wealth in the children's combined fortunes that some of this is jealousy-motivated - a removal of a rival from Olaf's past, however nonsensical that may seem given that Kit is currently about to give birth to another man's child.

 _Distract her,_ Olivia thinks, _we just need a little time._ Not that they have much - Kit's breathing grows more and more labored the longer they remain here.

Inside the greenhouse, Scylla is still barking - the door rattles as she throws herself against it over and over again. "What did you do to my dog?" Olivia asks without really thinking about it - anything to get the woman talking.

Esme sneers again. "That mangy mutt? I used a dog whistle, even VFD dogs can't resist those. It really is quite a stupid beast; luring it in there was easy as pie, just like my clever Olaf said it would be. Speaking of which," she snarls, training her harpoon on Kit despite Olivia's best efforts to stay in the way, "where is he?"

"He's unconscious in the library," Olivia says, desperate to keep her attention. "He sustained a few serious blows to the head, you might go and check on him."

For a moment, it actually looks like Esme considers it - but only for a moment. "Ha, and leave you two here to your plotting? How stupid do you think I am?"

"We won't be _plotting_ ," Olivia interjects before Kit can make some sort of reply that gets her killed. "She's in _labor_ , can't you see? I need to help her deliver her baby, Esme."

There's another beat of silence as Esme measures them, but given the somewhat demented gleam in her eye Olivia doesn't feel very hopeful about what her choice will be. Behind them, Scylla is snarling up a storm, rattling the door louder and louder, her claws scraping off the glass in the window panes.

"I'm afraid I really don't have that kind of time," Esme says, and Olivia's heart sinks. "Jacques Snicket will be back any moment, and Olaf and I will need to be ready for him. He's the _real_ threat, you see." Esme says this last part almost conspiratorially, as though Olivia honestly doesn't know. As though she doesn't know that if she'd been the one to take the children to the beach and he'd been here, this whole situation never would have happened.

Esme raises her harpoon gun again, and Olivia thinks she's going to pull the trigger and be done with it there and then, but it doesn't happen that way. Instead, she brings it down on the space between Olivia's neck and shoulder, and agony, hot and bright, throws her to the ground for what feels like the millionth time today. A wickedly sharp stiletto braced over her throat rather effectively pins her in place.

The gun comes back up to lock onto Kit, and Olivia thinks, _no,_ struggles even as the stiletto blade presses ever closer to her jugular, draws blood.

"Any last words, _dear_ Kitty?" asks Esme.

Time seems to slow. Olivia wonders, as the light glints off Esme's nails, clothes, weapon, if this hadn't all been… destined, if she wasn't supposed to have died at that carnival, if everything since then has simply been borrowed time. If Kit's life is the somehow price of her own.

Kit isn't looking at Esme, though; she regards Olivia calmly despite the pain on her face. There's a level look in her eyes, a readiness, a strange sort of peace. "The world is quiet here."

"It's certainly _about_ to be," Esme says through gritted teeth.

 _I'm sorry, Jacques,_ Olivia thinks, still trying futilely to pry Esme's stiletto away, to get to Kit, to somehow stop this. _I'm so, so sorry, my darling._

In that moment, three things happen at once: Kit raises her chin in cold, steady defiance, Olivia screams, and a shadow passes between Esme and her prey, leaping into the line of fire at the last - and worst - possible second.

"Esme, _no!_ " There's a click, and a wet, squelching thunk, and a strangled gasp.

And then Olaf's body hits the ground beside Olivia, a harpoon sticking out of his chest at a gruesome angle.

For a single, strange beat, even the very earth seems to hold its breath in shock.

And then Esme _screams_ , long and loud, recoiling from what she's done and stepping away from Olivia's throat in the process. Olivia doesn't hesitate - she springs over Olaf's body and lunges for Kit, all but dragging her to her feet and towards the greenhouse.

Olivia's fingers are unsteady with fear and adrenaline, but they only fumble for a second around the doorknob. She turns it, yanks, and leaps clear as Scylla comes flying out, fur bristled, teeth bared, and zeroes in on the only threat left standing.

Esme manages to get the empty harpoon gun up just in time - Scylla's jaws snap closed around the barrel with enough strength to make the metal creak. Esme shoves at it, buying herself precious seconds to turn and flee into the treeline at her back. It won't be enough - Scylla can run like greased lightning when she's only playing, but right now she's _enraged_ , little more than a spotted blur as she gives chase.

"Are you alright?" Kit asks again, once the pair of them have disappeared from view. She's panting heavily, brows drawn tight together in pain, so Olivia doesn't bother to answer, merely scoops up what few towels don't appear to have touched the ground at all and tries to lead her inside the cover of the greenhouse. Its main benefit now is the lock on the door, which will come in handy if there are any other villians lurking about or if Esme somehow makes it back - although given Scylla's ferocity, _that's_ somewhat doubtful.

"Wait," Kit says, moving away from the door and back towards Olaf, who to Olivia's surprise appears to still somehow be _breathing_.

She kneels down beside him, looks as though she might like to say something but can't seem to find the words for it. It's the first time today that Olivia has seen her look _lost_.

When Olaf stretches out a trembling hand - still cuffed, he must have weaselled himself free of the sofa after all - for Kit's, she doesn't draw away. He brings it weakly to his lips and then lets it go, somehow managing to find the energy to give a last, crooked smile.

"I told you I'd kiss you again, Kitty," he says. And then he's gone.

Just like that.

Kit doesn't move for what feels like ages, simply kneeling there in the grass with the wind in her hair and a dead villain in front of her, and Olivia only watches, silent and ready to help whenever she's needed.

She doesn't have to wait long.

"Olivia," Kit calls, and she's by her side in an instant, helping her to her feet, "I think it's time."

The pair of them make their way into the greenhouse. It's a quiet, beautiful place - not much has been done with it yet, but she and Jacques have plans to grow various kinds of tea leaves and herbs and exotic flowers and whatever the children feel like trying their hands at. It's elegant and old, the only thing on the property to have withstood the fire that brought down the manor all those years ago. It's domed with frosted glass rather than tarp, and fashioned into an elegant arch overhead. There's a stained-glass VFD eye above the doorways at either end of the space, splashing rainbows in gentle patterns on the floor as sunlight filters through.

It's not ideal, but Olivia thinks there could be worse places to bring new life into the world.

There are a few discarded cushions in the corner for lawn chairs that have yet to be set out - Olivia leads Kit to them and helps her sit, and then races as fast as her aching body will carry her for the industrial sink at the other end of the room. She turns up the tap as hot as it will go, scrubs her hands until she can barely feel them, and then moves back to Kit, who by now is glassy-eyed and groaning with exertion.

Olivia kneels down, takes a deep, steadying breath, and looks her in the eye.

"We can do this," she says, and Kit nods at her once, brave and indomitable and every inch a Snicket.

They get to work.

* * *

The paramedics arrive only minutes too late to help with the birth, but they handle everything that comes after, whisking mother and child - a girl, red-faced and wrinkly with Snicket eyes and an unruly mass of dark hair she must get from her father - into the safety of an ambulance to be cared for and cleaned up.

They take one look at Olivia and do the same to her. Apparently, she's concussed and she'll have bruises pretty much everywhere for _weeks_ , but considering she'd avoided taking a harpoon to the chest, she counts herself lucky.

Now, the manor grounds swarm with police and members of the official fire department, as well as a few unobtrusive members of VFD. Jacquelyn and Larry, the waiter, are among them, having arrived via motorcycle and sidecar, respectively, directly behind the ambulance. They hover protectively over Olivia during her entire examination, filling her in on the situation.

"Jacques is on his way with the children," Jacquelyn says. "He sounded very worried."

"I'm sure he is," Olivia says tiredly. Her entire body aches, and it feels like each of her limbs weighs several tons.

"The police finally found Esme," says Larry, the waiter. "Scylla had her pinned up one of the apple trees. It looks like she got a few bites in first, though - Esme's going to need a lot of stitches, and possibly surgery."

"Good," Olivia says. She should feel vindictive about this, she thinks, and probably will later, but for right now she's empty, numb like her head's under water.

In the background, the fire alarm inside the house finally, finally switches off, and the sprinkler system with it. Olivia is very carefully not thinking about how much damage was likely done, how much they'll have to replace, and especially not about the state of her library, because she just might burst into hysterical tears if she does.

In that second, she wants Jacques so badly it _aches_.

There's a whine, and Jacquelyn steps aside to reveal Scylla approaching, tail wagging almost hesitantly. Olivia reaches out for her and the dog comes at once, licking her face and nudging her and chuffing as if in comfort. She fists her hands in her fur and just holds on, exhausted.

"Good girl," she whispers, and receives another lick in response.

" _Olivia!_ "

Her head snaps up so quickly it sets the world to spinning again - she knows that voice almost better than her own. As though he'd been summoned by her very thoughts, she sees her partner moving around the corner of the manor towards her, his jaw set, his eyes blazing.

"Jacques," she breathes, scarcely able to believe her eyes for relief. She gets to her feet without even consciously deciding to do so, taking a few unsteady steps to meet him and collapsing in his arms the second he's within reach.

The tears do fall then, slipping down over her cheeks before she can stop them, and he brushes them away almost frantically, impossibly gentle and ever-mindful of the injuries she knows must be showing all over her face.

"I'm fine," she hastens to reassure him even through her tears. "Honestly, I promise I'm fine. This all looks much worse than it is."

He doesn't appear to hear her, only drags her close and holds her so tightly she can barely breathe, cupping a hand around the back of her head and locking the other like a brace around her back like someone's going to attempt to snatch her from him at any moment.

She buries her face in his shoulder and just holds on, so tightly her abused muscles shake, digging her nails into the fabric of his shirt. Now that they've started, she can't stop the flood of tears from falling, soaking his shoulder even as she desperately tries to compose herself.

"Never again," he finally says, and the pain in his voice rocks her to her core. "This will never, ever happen again."

Jacques abhors making these kinds of promises, especially since he's intimately acquainted with the world and the dangers that lurk within it, but the firm sureness of his voice, like he's going to make it true through sheer force of will, stuns her.

It's a long moment before she can gather herself enough to reply, terrified out of her wits that this will be it, that this will be the thing that drives him from her. _Understand_ , she silently begs, _please, please understand the way you always have before._

"I'm _so_ sorry, Jacques," she says, voice muffled against this shoulder. "I wanted to call you, but you have to know why I couldn't." It's weak, it sounds so weak but she wouldn't change it, would make the same choice over and over and over again, and _stars_ , this must have been how he felt in the Village of Fowl Devotees when he'd faked his death even though he knew the pain it would cause. She'd forgiven him for it the instant he'd reappeared in the carnival and saved her life, but she does it again, now, because now she _gets_ it.

"I do," he says, hoarse, like the words are scraping his throat raw, and she goes nearly boneless with relief. "I understand. I'm… not happy, but I understand."

It's all she can ask for - she clings tighter to him and is gratified when he does the same to her. _We'll be just fine_ , she thinks.

She opens her eyes to see that Jacquelyn and Larry, the waiter, have disappeared to give them space, but that there are six very frightened children in their place, watching the display with wide eyes. Scylla and Charybdis stand behind them, growling viciously at anyone who comes near.

 _Stars._ She pulls away from Jacques reluctantly and reaches out for them. "Hello, children," she says, as calmly as she can manage, "how was the beach?"

She doesn't get much of a reply, but what she _does_ get is an armful of children as all six of them launch themselves at her at once. She barely hears Jacques' gentle admonishment for them to be careful with her, so overwhelmed is she with relief - she can't seem to pull them all close enough, to press enough kisses to their brows.

"It's all over," she says breathlessly. "You're safe now."

"You could have died," says Klaus, tears spilling out from behind his glasses. He's shaking, and he's not the only one. The whole group of children practically vibrates in her arms. "Olaf kills the guardians that care about us, Olivia. He always kills them, he kills them or they leave."

She pulls back to cup his face in her hands, to look him fiercely in the eye. "Not anymore," she says. "He's gone. He can't hurt any of you or me or Jacques or anyone else ever, ever again."

Whether by the whim of fate or some cosmic force or by sheer, ludicrous chance, the coroner chooses that exact moment to cart Olaf's body past them. It's covered, but one leg dangles out from beneath the sheet, nearly dragging on the ground - the tattoo of the VFD eye, identical to the one Jacques has on his own ankle, almost seems to watch them as it passes.

"Look at me," Olivia orders, leaving no room for argument. "Don't look at that, look at me."

The obey without question, burrowing back into her. "We're really glad you're alright, Olivia," Isadora says, nearly whispers, and stars, it's her _birthday_.

She opens her mouth to reply, to apologize, to say _something_ , but she's evidently maxed out what little energy she had left, because the world tilts again and she can feel her legs buckle, start to fold beneath her.

Jacques catches her in an instant, scooping her up effortlessly and hoisting her back onto the edge of the ambulance, framing her face in warm, calloused hands. "I'm going to find a paramedic," he says, but the thought of him being away from her is instantly and ferociously unbearable.

She reaches out and grasps his hand, anchoring him in place, giving a smile that she hopes looks steadier than she feels. "I'm fine," she says. "Just a little woozy, but that always happens to me when you're around."

This would normally be the kind of thing that would make him laugh or at least crack a smile, which had been why she'd even said it instead of giving the real reason, which is _They gave me very strong painkillers_ , but his mustache doesn't so much as twitch in response.

It comes to her, then, what this must have looked like to him, arriving here to find her bruised and covered in blood, the fire alarm blaring and a dead body on his lawn. It's horrible and she hates that it happened this way, but it's much, much better than what the alternative would have been, a standoff between him and Olaf and Esme, bargaining over the fates of the children and the sugar bowl for _her_.

"Jacques," she says, forces him to look at her, and not with those sweeping, searching examinations he's been giving her since he'd arrived, but to really _look._ "I'm okay."

His shoulders sag like the breath has been driven from him. "I should have been here," he says. "You never should have been alone."

 _Dear man,_ she thinks, grasping his hand tighter. "I wasn't alone," she says. "Your sister showed up and saved the day in true Snicket fashion, _and_ she did it while in labor."

 _That_ gets his attention. " _What?_ "

Olivia blinks. "Jacquelyn didn't tell you? Kit's here - she had her baby in our greenhouse."

Jacques could not possibly have looked more stunned had she reached out and smacked him. She smiles. "You should go check on her, she's in the other ambulance."

He nods almost absently, moving as though to do as she's said, then turns back around at the last second and plants a kiss on her forehead. "I'll be _right_ back," he says, and only withdraws once she's nodded her acknowledgement.

She watches him go almost in a daze, then turns back to the children, who are still watching her anxiously. _Well, that won't do at all._

"Violet," she says, easing off the edge of the ambulance to sit on the grass and gesturing for the others to do the same. "Would you mind terribly grabbing the vanilla ice cream out of the freezer in the kitchen, and several spoons? I'd do it myself but I'm not quite… mobile, at the moment."

"Of course," Violet says, and then disappears inside the house. When she returns, she has the items Olivia had requested in hand, and passes the spoons around to each of the others.

None of them look particularly eager to start, so Olivia does, the cold sweetness tasting like bliss on her tongue. Violet follows suit, then Duncan, and then the others. Klaus helps Sunny with her own spoon, but she appears to handle it on her own pretty well, and it comes to Olivia then that very soon she won't need help with things like this anymore.

"I'm very sorry for my ruse earlier, children," she says to the Quagmires. "I stayed home so I could set up the surprise party for you, but then Olaf showed up, and things went south rather quickly. It's not the birthday you deserve, and not at all the one I wanted to give you, but we'll figure something else out, alright?"

"We don't care about that. We're just glad you're okay," says Quigley. Olivia smiles at him.

Violet shifts suddenly, tapping the back of her spoon against her lips in thought, brows drawn. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," Olivia says.

"How," she swallows, tries again, "how did Olaf die?"

Olivia pauses, biting her lower lip before remembering that it's injured and wincing in pain. She remembers what happened, of course she does, and she doubts she'll ever forget, but there's an element to it that's gone… just a bit fuzzy around the edges, although whether that's due to her concussion or to the adrenaline in the moment or how quickly it all seemed to happen, she isn't sure.

"Esme killed him," she finally says. "It was an accident."

Although the _why_ of it, the why behind his intervention in the first place, remains a mystery even to her. Olaf is - _was_ \- the most selfish, greedy, foul human being she has ever had the misfortune of meeting, and yet he'd tried to stop Esme from killing someone who had broken his nose and knocked him unconscious only minutes before, an open enemy.

 _No_ , she thinks suddenly, remembering _Kitty_ , and the kiss he'd used the last of his energy to give, _not just an enemy._

Violet nods, a pensive furrow between her brows. Olivia watches her carefully, waiting for her to speak, to ask something else, but she never does. None of the Baudelaires do - instead they sit and just… stare at each other, blinking in a way that looks almost like shock.

"Gone," Sunny finally says, teeth clinking against her spoon.

Olivia reaches forward, swipes a spare bit of ice cream away from her mouth with her thumb, strokes her cheek. "Yes, sweetheart. He's gone for good."

There's another long beat of silence, and then Klaus says, " _Good_ ," and the subject is dropped.

It will take time for it to truly sink in, she knows, and the children will always carry the pain Olaf caused with them, but they've all been working towards healing for some time now, have been recovering and growing and learning how to not be afraid. Olivia thinks there can be no more fitting end for such a horrible man, for the people he tormented to eat ice cream in silence instead of discussing his death or the havoc he'd wreaked. And they do just that, chatting quietly and sharing their treat and leaning against one another, and all the while the dogs keep watch, and they're all okay. It's hard to imagine, in an aftermath like this, that she had been fighting for her life only an hour before.

When Jacques returns, Olivia can't quite read the expression on his face. He settles down next to her and takes her spoon from her wordlessly before digging in to what's left of the ice cream.

"Kit briefed you?" she asks.

"She did. She says you were quite the hero."

Olivia blinks. Getting thrown around her own library and doing nothing but watching helplessly while Kit was almost harpooned doesn't really _feel_ heroic, but she doubts she'd going to change Jacques' mind on the matter.

"How is she?" she asks.

Jacques sighs. "She's fine. Exhausted, of course, but that's to be expected."

"And your niece?" Olivia says. Suddenly exhausted herself, she leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes, settled by his nearness.

"Beautiful," Jacques says. She can hear the pride in his voice. "She and Dewey are still arguing over names, and from what I understand have been doing so since Kit discovered she was pregnant, so it might be a few more months before we know what to call her."

Olivia huffs out a soft laugh, then opens her eyes again, staring at the faces of her family, feeling Jacques' warmth against her cheek,and thinks, _now._

"All of our enemies have been defeated," she says lowly, so as not to disturb the children - they're talking quietly amongst themselves, visibly subdued, grave in the face of what had almost happened. She hates it and she's going to do everything she can to fix it, but there's something she needs to do first.

"Finally," Jacques says on a sigh, voice rumbling through her. He's still tense, though; Olivia knows it will be some time, months or years even, before he truly accepts that they're safe.

She pulls away from him so she can better look him in the eye, because this is arguably the most important conversation she'll ever have in her life. "I have two things to tell you," she says, then amends, "Well, one thing. The second thing is a question."

His lips twitch - it's the first sign of amusement she's gotten from him so far. "Well, what's the first thing?"

"I love you, Jacques Snicket," she says.

He blinks at her for a long, slow moment, like her words aren't quite processing - not as though he doesn't believe her but as though it doesn't compute that it's finally safe to say them. And then he swoops closer, cradles her face in his hands with that same incredible gentleness, and presses their foreheads together. "I love you too, Olivia Caliban."

An uncontrollable smile breaks out across her face, so strong and wide it makes her bruises ache but she doesn't care at all, doesn't think she'll ever be able to stop.

 _I love you_ , she thinks, pressing kisses to his mouth, his cheeks, his brow, _I love you, I love you, I love you_. She only stops when his mouth claims hers, deep and firm and sure and perfectly, completely right. It's seconds and years before he withdraws, but she drags him back in again for long moments before she's content to let him go.

"What," he says, breathless like he's just run a marathon, has to try again, "what did you want to ask me?"

She grabs his hand, holds it tight to her. "Will you please marry me?"

His expression goes soft in that way she loves, has loved from the moment she first asked him what her safety rope attached to and he'd said, _me_ , like there was no other possible answer, from the moment she'd grabbed his shoulder in his taxi that first time, and he'd looked back at her like she was the answer to all his questions.

"Of course I'll marry you," he says, and then resumes kissing her stupid.

When he withdraws long moments later, it's only so he can dig in the pocket of his jacket, nearly fumbling in his haste to withdraw a small, velvet box.

"I've actually been meaning to ask you the same question," he says, opening the lid to reveal a beautiful golden band studded with a single, shining pearl.

"I know it's not a diamond," he hastens to explain, "but I saw it in the shop and I thought it suited you."

 _Stars_ , he really does know her better than anyone else. "Jacques, I'd marry you if it was a diamond or a pearl or a sapphire, or plastic shaped to look like any of those, or if you never gave me a ring at all," she says, blinking back tears again as she extends her left hand for him to place it on her finger. She's not the least be surprised to discover it fits perfectly. "But pearls happen to be my favorite."

She smiles at him, watery and weak, kisses him once, twice, three times, then draws back to give a shaky little laugh. "I have your ring too, but it's in my sock drawer. I hope it fits." She's pretty sure it will, though, and that he'll appreciate it - it's gleaming, stainless steel rather than gold or silver, and won't tarnish or fracture, a perfect ring for a man who works with his hands as often as Jacques does.

"I can fix it if it doesn't," Violet interjects quietly, and that's when Olivia realizes that the children have been watching them with varying degrees of delight and discomfort for some time now.

She laughs out loud, face flaming as she buries her head in the crook of Jacques' shoulder. She's not as embarrassed as she probably should be, partially because she's too concussed to care but also because she's alive and so is her family. In this moment, it's impossible to feel anything but a rush of joy so complete it almost hurts, hurts the way _relief_ can hurt, the ache of a long-tensed muscle finally relaxing or the sweet sting of balm on a burn.

They're alive, and together, and there are no more arsonists in the shadows and no more knives in the dark.

They are finally, finally safe.

 **A/N: Hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it! There will be a quick epilogue posted some time this week, and that will be a wrap on this fic! Thank you so so much to everyone who read and supported this work - I've had such a blast writing it! Please let me know what you think!**

 **As ever, all of this belongs to Daniel Handler and not me.**

 **Special thanks to lady-stormbraver for her incredibly helpful feedback! You're my partner in crime, girl!**

 **Thanks also to everyone who fav'd, followed, or reviewed - you guys gave me the motivation to keep plugging along and finish this fic! I can't thank you all enough!**

 **Don't forget to let me know what you thought!**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Starcrier.**


	6. The Peaceful Postscript

_The Peaceful Postscript_

Almost exactly one month after the defeat of their enemies, Olivia Caliban marries Jacques Snicket on a dreary Wednesday morning, with flowers in her hair and a spyglass in her pocket and her children by her side.

They'd agreed to do it at the courthouse in the city, because it's practical and quick and neither one of them had felt the need to stage an elaborate ceremony to state what they both already know: that they will remain partners for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad.

 _Till death do us part_ , Olivia thinks as she leans down to sign the marriage license in her own hand. Jacques does the same a moment later, and then sweeps her up into a kiss that makes the world fall away. Behind them, their children clap and cheer, rushing forward as one to embrace them.

Jacques laughs and pulls away from her to embrace them back, grinning wider than he ever has before, boyish and bright. It's the first instance in the entire time she's known him that she can't see any shadows behind his eyes. Her heart breaks all over again for love of him.

"Jacques Snicket," she says. She means to say more, probably, but this is all she can manage.

"Olivia Snicket," he replies, eyes brilliant. The sound of her name joined with his sends electricity dancing along her spine, beneath her skin, within her collarbones. She drags him closer and kisses him again, just because she can.

 _Who needs a safety rope,_ she thinks, _ask me and I'll fly._

* * *

"Olivia, where should we put this table?" Klaus calls.

Olivia turns from helping Violet unload party supplies from the backseat of the taxi to see him and Duncan standing in the garage, each holding an end of a folding table flat between them and looking at her expectantly. Sunny perches on the top of it, wearing a toothy grin and brandishing a carrot stick like a maestro's baton.

Olivia smiles and moves to hoist the girl into her arms, before gesturing to the corner of the house. "In the backyard, please, boys. We'll move the refreshments out soon."

The boys nod and follow her directive, and Jacques emerges from behind them a moment later, a table of his own under each of his arms. His wedding ring glints in the dying sunlight when he turns to smile at her. It makes something warm and bright light up in her chest.

"Kit just called," he says, "she and Dewey and the baby are on their way."

"Jacquelyn won't be far behind, then," Olivia muses as she trails behind him, "are you sure I can't help you carry anything?"

"You're helping carry Sunny," Jacques replies over his shoulder. There's a strange note in his voice - Olivia narrows her eyes at his back, something he can apparently sense given the way his shoulders suddenly tense up.

"You're fussing again," she accuses.

"I am not _fussing_ ," he denies, fussily.

"You _are_ , you're just trying to be sneaky about it," she says, then sighs. "Jacques, it's been weeks. I'm not even bruised anymore."

"I know that," he says, turning to look back at her. He nearly whacks a passing Charybdis in the head with one of his tables in the process, who thankfully dodges just in time and gives him a look that seems almost affronted.

"Fussing," Sunny says with a solemn nod. Jacques barks out a laugh in response, leaning close to kiss the girl's cheek. She wrinkles her nose in that way she always does when his mustache tickles her face.

"The women in my life are ganging up on me," he laments with a smile.

"You ought to get used to it," Violet casually interjects as she breezes by, carrying a box of fairy lights.

"The other boys already have," Isadora adds, following on her heels with an armful of streamers.

Jacques laughs again, turning carefully to continue into the backyard. "Never let it be said that Jacques Snicket didn't know when he was beaten. Very well, I admit that I might be _fussing_. Just a bit."

"So that means you'll let me help?" Olivia tries.

"Not a chance, darling."

The _darling_ line is cheating, and he knows it; making her blush is one of the few underhanded tricks he resorts to in his attempts to win - usually academic - arguments, but it's not going to work this time, thanks very much. Even if her face _is_ flaming, blast the man.

"You'll recruit me to hunt down villainous fire-starters, but setting up _tables_ is where you draw the line?"

"Well, they're very heavy tables." He's actually _laughing_ at her, she realizes, half-wishing she wasn't carrying Sunny so she could find something to throw at him.

" _Jacques._ "

He collects himself enough to set his tables down against the deck and turn back to face her, the corners of his eyes still crinkled in amusement. "If you'd really like to help, someone really ought to go make sure Quigley isn't going to burn our newly-repaired kitchen down."

"He's only making _punch_ , Jacques," says Olivia, but looks back over her shoulder in sudden concern. The boy is among the most capable of any she's ever met at his age, but his skills in the kitchen are somewhat in need of development.

"That never stopped Kit," Jacques replies, mockingly grave. She gives in to the urge to whack him on the shoulder. It only makes him laugh again, and she can feel a smile of her own tug at her lips in response.

"What kind of wedding reception would it be if the punch bowl suddenly burst into flames?" he continues, snatching her hand and tugging her close to plant a kiss on her forehead.

The way he says _wedding reception_ makes her stomach jump. She's actually _married_ to this man. He actually _loves_ her, enough to spend the rest of his life with her.

Olivia had never before thought of herself as _lucky_. Now she wonders how she could ever think anything else, so long as this man was by her side.

"A memorable one, certainly," Olivia sniffs primly, forcing herself away from the thought before she does something ridiculous, like burst into tears. "And I actually _am_ going to go check on him, but only because I want to make sure the food is ready. I know you're only trying to get me out from underfoot."

"Never," Jacques vows.

She only shakes her head at him as she moves towards the back door, hiding a smile. The kitchen is still standing when she enters, thankfully, and there's a huge crystal bowl of punch on the table waiting to be set out. Quigley stands at the sink, washing dishes and reading a book at the same time.

Olivia wrinkles her nose when she catches the scent of drywall and fresh paint under the smell of the chocolate pies she'd made earlier. She'd been right about the damage the sprinklers had done to the manor, all those weeks ago - the repairs had been extensive, at least when it came to the walls and floors, and most of their books and electronics had been beyond salvaging. The library, too, had needed a complete overhaul, with almost all of the inventory needing to be replaced - although Jacques holds out hope that VFD's bookbinders back at Headquarters can save some of them. But considering what the sprinklers had stopped, the kind of damage they had prevented, Olivia doesn't dare complain. Most of their furniture had been salvageable, anyway, and all their clothes and personal items had been left relatively untouched. It's by far the best outcome she could have hoped for after a confrontation with a man like Olaf.

Jacques had immediately thrown himself into planning the repairs and upgrades after the incident, of course, but even with his proactivity, it was still weeks before they were able to move back in. In the meantime, Kit's partner, Dewey Denouement, had graciously opened the penthouse suite of his hotel to their family, and categorically refused to let them pay for it.

"If you weren't practically family already, Jacques, you will be when Kit and I finally tie the knot," Dewey, a tall, gawky man with thick sideburns and the familiar gleam of intellect in his eyes that identified him as a fellow librarian, had said the day they'd arrived, "and anyway, she'd skin me alive if she thought I was making you pay to stay here."

"Or she'd charge me double the rate," Jacques had grumbled, but eventually conceded.

The penthouse suite had been luxurious, and would likely be considered spacious by any family that had fewer than eight people, but since they _are_ a family of eight people, plus two dogs, it had been just a touch cramped.

Predictably, however, none of the children had muttered a word of complaint or even appeared to be out of sorts about the situation at all. Olivia suspects it's because they are all eerily accustomed to having to rebuild their lives, over and over and over again, and she prays to every deity she can think of that this will be the very last time they ever have to do so.

They'd all enjoyed their time at the hotel, and it had been incredibly helpful in their collective emotional recovery, but had all still breathed quiet sighs of relief when they'd finally been permitted to come home. Hotel Denouement may have been "the last safe place" for VFD, but for their family, it's Snicket Manor.

Olivia sets Sunny down in her high chair so she has both hands free to pull the sandwiches out of the refrigerator. She catches a glimpse out the back window of Isadora and Violet laughing at something as they string lights across the deck, of Duncan and Klaus debating the best way to hang the streamers off the horseradish apple trees, of her husband - her _husband_ \- throwing cream-colored cloths over the tables, and tries to tell herself that everything is going to be fine. It's not like that many people are even coming, and they have no more immediate enemies looming over their heads like the sword of Damocles. It's just a simple, quiet wedding reception full of the people they trust and care for most.

It's fine. It's all… going to be just fine.

"Are you alright, Olivia?" Quigley says. Olivia turns to see him watching her, head tilted curiously to the side.

It's a familiar question, one she's gotten dozens of times over the last few weeks from almost everyone in her family. She'd scared them badly, she knows, and so they had worked overtime to ensure that she was safe and comfortable in the days that followed Olaf's attack on the manor. Jacques would barely let her walk around on her own for more than a few minutes at a time during the first week after everything - they'd had their first ever spat because of that, actually.

Everyone had loosened up eventually, but she can still feel them watching her when they think she's not looking, as though they expect her to break apart or dissolve into dust before their eyes at any moment. Olivia hates that she was the one to rattle their trust in the security of the life they've built, but at the same time she'd rather it have been her than anyone else.

"I'm fine, Quigley," she says. "No headaches today."

"No, I mean," he says, shifts on his feet, "you seem upset."

She blinks at him. "Not at all. I'm only making sure everything is in order for the party."

Quigley tilts his head at her, flicking his eyes across her face as he reads her with the same ease he does his atlases. "Are you worried?"

 _Perceptive boy,_ she thinks, blinking at him again.

"You aren't?" she asks, not because she thinks he should be, but because it would surprise her if he wasn't.

"Why would I be?" Quigley asks, as though the question genuinely confuses him. "You and Jacques are here."

She wants to hug him very badly, just then. "I just want to make sure you children have everything you want," Olivia says, quieter than she means to. "That you're happy, as well as safe. No more upsets."

Quigley grins at her, quick and bright, and she can't help but return it. "We already _do_ have everything we want," he says. "And you've made us safe. Don't worry about the party. My siblings will love you no matter what happens. So will the Baudelaires." He pauses, gnawing on his lower lip for only a moment before continuing. "So will I."

Something kicks in Olivia's chest, or unclenches, or shatters. She sets the tray of sandwiches down as carefully as she can manage with her shaking hands. "Can I hug you?" she asks.

Instead of answering, he pitches himself into her arms, clinging tightly. Stars, the boy is almost as tall as she is.

"Sweetheart," she says, pressing a kiss to his hair, "I love you too."

* * *

The children have outdone themselves with the decorations. The fairy lights glow faintly in the fading light of the evening, and the faux candles flickering in frosted glass vases give the whole space a warm, cozy feel. There are bouquets of wildflowers set up on every table, and the streamers on the trees drift lazily in the wind.

Looking at it all now, no one would ever be able to tell that anything horrible had ever happened in this house, or perhaps even in the world at all.

Kit and Dewey and their baby, who still has yet to be publicly named, arrive first, and to Olivia's surprise and delight they have a Vigilant Fire Dog of their own in tow, another female Dalmatian by the name of Circe. She tracks the baby's whereabouts with calm, watchful eyes, no matter who's holding her, and continuously sniffs at the wind, ever-watchful.

Jacquelyn and Larry, the waiter, arrive next, which completes their guest list entirely, but that's alright - none of them are in the mood for any kind of grand affair and likely won't be for quite some time. They've all more than earned their right to peace and quiet; Olivia is just content to have them all here, happy and safe and relaxed without any more threats lurking just out of sight.

There will always be fire-starters and fortune-snatchers in the world, Olivia knows, just as there will always be people out there to stop them. But tonight there's none of that, just a group of people drinking root beer floats and enjoying each other's company and celebrating this new chapter in their life.

They spend dinner reminiscing about old friends and old stories, laughing and talking in turns. Olivia leans back against Jacques and listens with rapt attention, eager as she always is for information about the organization and the way it used to be. Jacques talks fondly about climbing Mount Fraught with Beatrice using only dessert forks and a pack of gum, and the Baudelaires sit forward, enraptured by the tale - and if they wipe at their eyes a few times, no one mentions it, although Olivia does discreetly pass a few tissues around. Jacquelyn tells stories about some of the escapades the Quagmire parents got up to, about how their mother once fought off twelve very angry mattress salesmen in a bar using only a lemon wedge and an ink blotter, and about how their father had proposed on the spot even though he'd only known her for two days. They tell stories about Josephine and Ike and Montgomery and Hector and Jerome and even Lemony, about the brave, noble goals they'd all worked towards together, about what they'd tried to become.

Olivia doesn't know that she agrees with fully with all the things VFD tried to do, and certainly not some of the ways they tried to go about doing them, but what she does know is that this organization with nobility and the pursuit of knowledge at its core had given her her partner, her children, and her purpose.

She wouldn't trade that, or any of the steps it took them to get here, for the world. Her family, the one she went out and made for herself, the one she chose and who chose her in return - they're the only thing that matters, now.

Olivia lets her eyes slip closed, tilting her head back against Jacques' shoulder and listening to the cadence of the voices around her and the laughter of her children, perfectly and completely at peace.

This is, of course, when the dogs all start to growl in unison, and Olivia actually groans aloud.

Everyone leaps to their feet in what feels like an instant, wordlessly moving around each other and into defensive positions - Olivia pulls each of the children behind her and takes Kit's baby from her without even thinking about it, while Kit and Jacques and Dewey move to form a living wall in front of them. Jacquelyn and Larry, the waiter, do the same at their backs.

The figure that looms out from around the corner of the house, however, is no threat at all, but a familiar, if not exactly friendly, face.

" _Lemony,_ " Kit breathes. Everyone around them seems to sigh in relief and gasp in shock at the same time.

"Good evening," comes the dry voice of Jacques' youngest and most elusive sibling. He's wearing a rumpled suit and a slouch hat that appears to have seen better days, and Olivia thinks he might have lost weight. "I hope I haven't disturbed the party."

"You have and you know it, you goon," Kit says, marching forward with an animation Olivia has never seen from her before. She can't tell, at first, whether Kit means to punch him or hug him, but it turns out to be the latter. Lemony goes stiff for the smallest instant before returning the embrace.

"You have some _serious_ explaining to do," Kit growls in a tone that leaves absolutely no room for argument or dramatics. It's a testament to how very formidable she can be that Lemony doesn't so much as hesitate before nodding.

"Later," he promises, as Jacques approaches to clap him on the shoulder. It's progress, or Olivia thinks it must be, anyway - the pair of them hadn't embraced at all the last time Lemony was here.

"I came to offer my congratulations," Lemony says, "both for the wedding and for the baby."

"We're very glad you could make it," Olivia hears herself say. He nods at her in a way that seems more than a nod, more than an acknowledgement or a greeting, but she can't for the life of her figure out what else it could mean.

The others move to greet him then, exchanging handshakes and pats on the back and cheek kisses, in Jacquelyn's case, but Olivia hangs back with the children and the baby, just watching.

She's watching her husband, specifically, and the small, almost relieved smile on his face as he stands beside his siblings, united at last. She waits for him to catch her eye and thinks, _I love you._ Thinks, _You deserve this._

He tilts his head at her, smiles like the sun. _I love you too,_ she hears, and returns it.

"Lemony, come hold your niece," Kit orders, practically dragging the much larger man over to Olivia's side.

She expects him to protest, although she's not sure why - perhaps it's because he doesn't strike her as someone who would be particularly good with children. Lemony surprises her though, and extends his hands to take the baby from her without a word of protest.

Olivia carefully hands her over. He cradles the infant close, nestles her expertly in the crook of his arm, and wonder of wonders, actually _smiles_. It doesn't last long, but it happens, and Olivia thinks he ought to do it more - it changes his whole face, crinkles his eyes at the corners, takes years off his appearance.

Violet draws closer, watching Lemony, studying his face as though searching for something. Olivia feels herself go tense.

"She looks a little like you," Violet says, effortlessly kind as she always is. Lemony smiles again, smaller than before, but still a smile, and Violet looks gratified, turning her attention to the baby in his arms.

She'll need to be told the truth soon, Olivia knows; she deserves to know the secret her mother took to her grave, but not tonight. Tonight, everything is simple and bright and hopeful in a way it's never been before - she doesn't want to ruin that with potentially damaging revelations about alleged paternity. _Soon_ , she thinks, trading a glance with Jacques, _but not yet._

"Have you managed to agree on a name yet?" Lemony asks lowly. The baby is awake, but barely, ready to drift off at any moment. She blinks up at him with glassy blue eyes that look so much like her mother's - watchful, brilliant Snicket eyes.

Kit gets a strange, almost hesitant expression on her face, then looks back to Dewey, who nods at her as if in encouragement. "It's Beatrice," she announces, with all the delicacy of someone dropping a glass. Or a bomb.

Lemony freezes, the fingers of his free hand suspended halfway to the baby's cheek. Somewhere behind Olivia, one of the Baudelaire children lets out a soft gasp. They shift closer to peer at the child as though they've never seen her before, awed and quiet. Olivia watches them carefully for any signs of distress at the name and is relieved to find none, only a kind of grave gratitude.

"Dewey and I want her to grow up to be brave, and clever, and kind," Kit elaborates, glancing at the Baudelaires, who offer small smiles in return. "Beatrice seemed like the ideal namesake."

"She's perfect, Kit," Lemony says after a long, long moment. The fairy lights glint off the gathering tears in his eyes.

"I know," Kit says, clearly attempting smugness, but it sounds too reverent to really hit the mark. She turns to Olivia with a small, secretive smile.

"We actually thought 'Beatrice Olivia Denouement' had a nice ring to it."

It's Olivia's turn to freeze; she stares at Kit, who only smiles gently at her, and then at Jacques, who seems just as surprised as she is but very, very pleased.

It takes Olivia long moments to find her voice. "I'm honored," she manages, finally. She doesn't realize tears have started to track down her face until Jacques steps near her, presses his mouth to her temple, breathes an endearment into her hair.

"You saved my life, and hers," Kit says gravely, "this is a small way to say thank you." Her eyes flick to Jacques' for the briefest moment. "For everything."

She turns back to Lemony and her baby then, perhaps in an attempt to avoid causing further emotional upheaval, but Olivia can only stare at her, unable to speak - and how would she even _begin_ to respond to a statement like that, anyway?

How can she go from her lonely little library in a faltering boarding school, to a garden party with a brave, noble husband and six kind, clever children and a niece that carries her name?

How can she go from having nothing to having _everything?_

"Am I dreaming?" Olivia asks faintly. Jacques laughs and leads her back towards the punch table.

"If you are, then so am I," he murmurs, pressing a glass into her hands. He's _not-fussing_ again, but she allows it, peering at him over the rim of her cup. He looks so happy like this, haloed by fairy lights and surrounded by people who care about him.

Stars, she loves him so much it hurts.

Behind her, Jacquelyn starts the gramophone Jacques had dragged out onto the deck. A bright, bouncy jazz piece begins to float through the backyard - she watches as Kit pulls Dewey over to dance with a small grin, and the pair of them move through their own little world in perfect sync with one another. Jacquelyn drags Larry, the waiter, onto what's quickly becoming an impromptu dance floor in the middle of their backyard, although their moves are a little wilder, faster than the waltz.

Olivia has to bite back a laugh at the sight of the sudden consternation on Lemony's face as he's left holding baby Beatrice. She has to admit it's a clever move on Kit's part - it's not as though Lemony can disappear without warning again if he's got his niece in his arms.

She turns to lean against her husband's side, reflexively seeking out the children.

The Quagmire boys appear to be trying to mimic Jacquelyn's steps just by watching, grinning at one another as they add increasingly more ridiculous flourishes. Violet looks on, shaking her head in mock exasperation and bouncing in place with Sunny on her hip, while Klaus and Isadora both slowly turn red and very pointedly look anywhere but at each other. Olivia has to bite back a laugh at the sight of them all, these brave, beautiful children of hers.

 _Stars above,_ Olivia thinks. _We made it._

"Shall we?" Jacques turns to her with a smile, hand extended. She takes it without hesitating, laughing as he guides her into the familiar steps of their own waltz, the one they'd danced the night he'd saved her life, the night he turned out to not be dead, the night they got their second chance.

She looks up at him, this man of hers - her partner, her best friend, her most trusted ally, the love of her life. She looks to her children - the Quagmires, who struggled for so long, the Baudelaires, who lost so much.

She looks at what they've made together, at the home they went out and built for themselves, at the happiness that lives where only grief and loss had gone before.

 _Like this_ , Olivia thinks, lifting her face to the starlight. _Our forever is going to be just like this._

* * *

There is a universe, somewhere, where they fail.

There is a universe, perhaps very near to this one, where VFD crumbles to ash, unable to protect its children, and never rises again. A universe where death and ruin follow the Baudelaires and Quagmires until the bitter end, until they are abandoned entirely, cast aside like detritus on a seashore. A universe where they never find solace, never find safety, never find _home_.

But this?

Well. This is not that universe.

And the world is quiet here.

* * *

 **A/N: That's a wrap, folks! Thank you so much for sticking with me! I hope you enjoyed - please let me know if you did!**

 **Thanks to everyone who favorited and reviewed! You guys are my heroes!**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Starcrier.**


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